What happens to all the stories accumulated throughout life, their tiny details about the people long gone, the places never visited again, and snapshots never to be lived? They have significance for the person who lived them; otherwise, the stories would have been long forgotten. But what happens to them when that person who kept it alive for decades, reiterating them during family gatherings, is gone also? The real history of mankind, from the perspectives of individuals who lived during those times, in those cities, who were involved in all the action, is unwritten and lost, leaving a gap to be filled by so-called historians or by a handful of storytellers.
Even for a family, what makes the generational existence meaningful is all the stories you hear from your grandparents, your parents, and those you tell for your children. But when the link is broken by sudden death, or by diseases, or simply by building a life far away, there remains a void where no stories exist. Is that why we feel uprooted when we move away from family, away from our childhood home, before we are thoroughly saturated with the tales from the past? Do people who have spent meaningful time with their elders feel more rooted in life?
I heard my share of family stories since I was fortunate enough to know my grandparents from both sides and was raised during times when we visited the family elders at every opportunity instead of vacationing at a fancy place. I know how my father’s family, a family of aristocrats, escaped from the Russian revolution, establishing a life for themselves in Turkey. They brought family heirlooms with them, some of which are in my possession now. My father’s aunt, who was never married and had no children, gifted me a bridal belt, representing purity, during my wedding. But besides a couple of pictures and the belt itself, there is no written story about what the belt means to the family or its history all the way from Chechnya. Even I forgot about it, and never had the details, and never told to my kids about it.
There are so many untold stories—stories of my life and my family, old and new, good and bad. It feels like a big loss to think that all will be gone when the time arrives. Like the stories my father used to tell about his high school teachers. I wish I recorded him, but now it is too late.