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"I didn't know..."
Dec. 23rd, 2022 02:37 pmMy friend KM is an amazing storyteller: she can tell you something that happened to her, and her face is so animated, and her voice, that you listen enthralled, and it's like whatever the thing was, it's happening to you, too.
Last week she was telling me a story that Laurie Anderson told, a story about rescuing her twin brothers from death in an icy lake when she was eight and they were two. KM heard this story on Anderson Cooper's podcast about grief,** so when she was telling the story, I was beside myself with fear that one or both of the twins were going to die. But that didn't turn out to be where the story was going.
( Laurie Anderson's story, as told by KM )
When KM got to what Laurie Anderson's mother said, tears started streaming down my face, profound gratitude for that mother who in that moment managed to say totally the right thing to her daughter.
The story kept on reverberating for me, so I looked up the podcast and listened to it, and I have to say, KM hewed pretty close to Laurie's original, but there was an intensity in how KM told the story--or maybe partly it was our setting, in a chilly, windswept meadow, after having crossed over a swollen blackwater stream--that made it even more compelling than Laurie's original, even though it was Laurie's own story.
**The podcast is called All There Is and the episode with Laurie Anderson is called "The Release of Love." She tells the story of her brothers near the very very end. Although I am fond of Laurie Anderson, the rest of her conversation with Anderson Cooper--her thoughts on the topic of grief--left me kind of cold, but grief is a complex emotion, and I have no doubt her words could be transformative for some.
Last week she was telling me a story that Laurie Anderson told, a story about rescuing her twin brothers from death in an icy lake when she was eight and they were two. KM heard this story on Anderson Cooper's podcast about grief,** so when she was telling the story, I was beside myself with fear that one or both of the twins were going to die. But that didn't turn out to be where the story was going.
( Laurie Anderson's story, as told by KM )
When KM got to what Laurie Anderson's mother said, tears started streaming down my face, profound gratitude for that mother who in that moment managed to say totally the right thing to her daughter.
The story kept on reverberating for me, so I looked up the podcast and listened to it, and I have to say, KM hewed pretty close to Laurie's original, but there was an intensity in how KM told the story--or maybe partly it was our setting, in a chilly, windswept meadow, after having crossed over a swollen blackwater stream--that made it even more compelling than Laurie's original, even though it was Laurie's own story.
**The podcast is called All There Is and the episode with Laurie Anderson is called "The Release of Love." She tells the story of her brothers near the very very end. Although I am fond of Laurie Anderson, the rest of her conversation with Anderson Cooper--her thoughts on the topic of grief--left me kind of cold, but grief is a complex emotion, and I have no doubt her words could be transformative for some.
