Who doesn’t like stories? From early on, we want to know things, and the earliest way many of us learned is through hearing stories. My grandma Owl had a seemingly bottomless well of such tales. She, like most grandmas, would haul up one to fit every event of life. Most were kindly “Grandma stories” she told when my sister Owls were around. But she scared me to death as we wended our way home through a dark country town one night. She told her version of the story of the Headless Horseman! She swore he rode over that bridge “RIGHT THERE!!!” Other grandmas warned not to climb trees as you would “break both legs!” A German grandma cautioned, “Elves will sneak into your mouth at night to chip away at your teeth with tiny pick axes if you don’t brush before bed!”

Besides these chilling locutions, there were other stories that we really experienced. My friend’s mom was crying really hard one day. I’d never seen a parent helplessly crying like that at my nine years of age. I asked my buddy, her son, what the problem was. He said something really sad had happened. His little brother died yesterday, at the age of six, while his parents were by him at his hospital bed. He’d looked up at them and said, “Goodbye Mommy and Daddy. I’m going to live with Jesus now.” He closed his eyes and died.

Certain comments remain with me as I fly around Limestone County, thinking about all the people I’ve encountered who all have stories. One is, “Life is stranger than anything the mind of man can invent.” The man who wrote that was Arthur Conan Doyle, the man who created Sherlock Holmes. If you knew of the various cases my real friend, an investigator, has uncovered, you’d agree with his observation that, “You can’t make this stuff up!” Another wise, life altering observation comes from a Holocaust survivor I chanced to hear speak. “With memory comes obligation.” What could that mean? I believe it means if you know — or have — a story that it would do the world well to know, too, you should tell it. It took over a generation for the German people to come to grips and begin to tell the stories of what brought about Hitler. They had to face honestly what they collectively and individually had done, not done, allowed, or looked away from to bring the dictatorship into being. Now, in each German school, the history of the Holocaust is told. Germans are among the most democratically minded people of the world today. Having faced their history and been honest about when they were in the wrong, they know what to watch for now to be sure it doesn’t happen again. They are a free people today.

I recently listened to a mixed-race German woman tell this spellbinding story. She was stunned to learn, by the chance reading of a randomly chosen library book, how she was the granddaughter of Amon Goetz, the actual sadistic concentration camp commander portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in “Schindler’s List.” Her conclusion was the devastating realization, “My grandfather would have shot me.” Thus her own book’s title spoke honestly of how her own Aryan racial superiority-obsessed grandfather would have murdered her. Was that chance or fate which caused her to light upon one book out of literally millions in the Hamburg library? Someone told her mother’s story, which helped her daughter put up for adoption know the great family secret. It was a shared secret of a German generation.

Stories bring us to new appreciations. A car broke down in town recently. The stranded driver, assisted by an Athenian, told this story while waiting for a tow. A home hospice assistant, she’d been there while many an Alzheimer’s patient slowly passed away, alone with their mind’s wanderings. Or, better said, as the modern expression now conveys a little more clearly, slowly went into “the long goodbye.” Her 30 years of hospice care was marked by all the elements of human emotion. One story, from her own family, remained with her. Her father-in-law, after a long illness, surrounded by family at his death bed, looked over at his wife in a moment of consciousness. He appeared to glow as he said to his wife of many years, “I see it. It really is a golden place, and such bright whiteness as I’ve never seen before! Do you mind if I leave now?” His wife leaned over and kissed him. He then closed his eyes, and took one more breath. This story was shared roadside, waiting for a tow.

In November we remember the stories of our military, but let’s also remember their families’ stories, too. After all, almost every service member thought of their family almost constantly, especially while away. The DAR is gathering letters and stories from such families to collate for future generations. I flew by and saw where Athens State is collecting stories from anyone to preserve for all time. Athens Limestone Public Library is gathering your stories of life in Limestone County.

Stories tell us something about who we are. Remember, though, like the German author who discovered her worst family secret, the value of honesty is never to be denied. She now knows what dishonesty wrought in her own family; she’d discovered her abandonment had been part of an entire generation’s great attempt to hide the Nazi past. When we help our children learn, be sure they know the whole story of their own and our collective past. They need to know the good we’ve done, correct the bad, and be aware of the ugly. It will make them stronger, and more honest. It is our obligation to tell the truth.