SEEING THE STORY [T, 2-24-26]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of An Old Storyteller—SEEING THE STORY [T, 2-24-26]

 

In his book, Ward 402, Ronald Glasser tells the story of four-year-old Kerry. Kerry was hysterically blind, meaning that there was nothing wrong with his eyes, but he couldn’t see. He wouldn’t see.

The doctors and nurses had done so many painful things to him that he had to close his eyes to them. Literally.

The painful things were done for good reasons, of course, but a child doesn’t understand that. All a child experiences is pain and discomfort.

Kerry ate with his eyes closed. He played with his eyes closed. He fumbled around on his bed for a toy or a piece of candy, just like a blind child. He simply would not open his eyes.

I have personal experience with this. Our grandson, Joe, was diagnosed with liver cancer when he was 15 months old. His first day at the doctor’s office, the nurse did something painful to him, so when she left the room, he pushed one of those little child-sized chairs up against the door, so that she could not get back in. That didn’t work.

So Joe shut his eyes to everything but story books. When a bad procedure was coming up, and he had to go without food and water for hours, his mother would read picture books to him, one book after another. I’d sit beside her and have the next book open to the first page and shove it into her hands before she read the last word of the current book. Not a moment for him to be in the world of the hospital. When she became too hoarse to read, I’d take over. Joe lived in a world of stories where pain could not come.

The doctors in Ward 402 did everything they could think of to get Kerry to open his eyes. They even considered prying them open. The resident, though, cautioned against that, for it they did that, then Kerry might be not be able to see with his eyes open.

He brought in a kitten. Without a word, he placed it on Kerry’s bed. The kitten mewed and rolled around. Kerry felt around for it, found it, felt the soft fur. The kitten bit at his fingers. Kerry laughed. At last, it was too much. He just had to open his eyes to see that kitten! His blindness was over.

Yes, I’ve told this story before, and I hope you remember, because it’s a great story. I hope I have told it in a way that allows you to see it, not because of the way I tell it, but because of the way you see it.

Good story telling is not flamboyant. It doesn’t call attention to the teller. If there is drama, or excitement, or pathos, or empathy, it’s not because of the teller, but because of the story.

A good story teller doesn’t tell you what to believe, or how to believe, but tells you the story you need to see, at that point in your life, the story that allows you to find out for yourself not just what you do believe but what you should believe.

That’s why we tell the Christ story. Over and over…

John Robert McFarland

“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.” Emily Dickinson