My Nonprofit Reviews

Almost buried treasures.

24 billion computers in the world and not a single one will ever carry the story of Lois, the 91 year-old award-winning poet, prairie woman and mother of ten. The ranch is gone, the children are gone and her binders of rhymes on the living room shelf will soon be tossed in the dumpster behind her one bedroom apartment, as forgotten as the unclaimed plastic box of her cremated remains.

People, like icebergs on a slow melt, are not always what they seem. White and pale for years on the surface, they conceal so many layers of translucent centuries-buried colors, rarely seen by a disinterested mankind. Like pages of a novel dissolved away by the waves, the iceberg and its colors will soon be no more.

And no one will know any different.

I had done her a favor.

Lois had lost most of her sight in her old age and told me she was tired of pouring watery canned julienne carrots over her pasta. Her tiny food pantry was mostly proceeds from the food bank and she could no longer tell the difference between a label of vegetables over one of marinara. I’d printed out stickers in 48point Helvetica bold and finally arrived to organize her pantry so that she could now tell the difference with a flashlight and the large magnifying glass she kept within easy grasp at the window sill.

She offered me toast and marmalade as a thank you which I declined mostly because I didn’t have the heart nor stomach to eat French’s mustard on a slice of bread. Mental note for a return visit: refrigerator labels.

While I needed to soon return to my regular post at the senior center outreach for which I’d left a note “Back in 45 minutes,” I didn’t know at the time it would be at least two hours before my return.

Walking behind her in her walker toward the sofa for a brief chat before leaving was tedious until I noticed the many white notebooks on the shelf, labeled Olivia, Jenny and the names of many others. Inquiring, she invited me to take the volume Christopher home for the weekend knowing I was also a writer and much less of a poet. “I think you’ll like that one, Don.” She went on to explain she wrote poetry as a young woman and had been published more times than she could remember. Many of her poems had become greeting cards for Hallmark and before that, smaller card companies across the U.S. and abroad. The bookends bracing her impressive collection were trophies for writing and poetry whose engravings had blurred and tarnished over the many years since she lost her sight and could only rub to read, which she’d done probably thousands of times since.

We talked of many things, including the ten children for which her binders were named, her little house on the prairie, the brevity of her fame before losing her sight, and her enduring fondness for capturing inspirational moments in her prose. So immersed in her colorful stories of the past, I finally looked at my phone to see the time had come and gone to return to my post. We said our goodbyes and it was my Friday, so I took Christopher and headed back to the office to pack up and enjoy my three day weekend.

“The saddest story in all of history will always be the one which went undiscovered and untold to no person nor pen and was buried alive eternally in an old soul.”

These were the words that came to me while I sat on my bed and had coffee with Christopher for three hours that Friday evening. Reading the poems and prose, I didn’t cry even once. It was probably a half dozen times or more. The richness and antiquity of the words of that 91 year old prairie woman melted my soul, imagining that someday, with no one to claim them, the orphaned binders Christopher, Olivia, Jenny and the seven others might end up in a dirty dumpster and a landfill, and probably very soon.

It was the weekend, and the days when I take care of my own aged mother .

Though 35 years Lois’ junior, I wondered what stories I will have missed of my own family history if I didn’t take the opportunity that weekend to have a chat with her on the sofa that rainy afternoon. I primed the pump with a few nostalgic recollections of our family and we had a few laughs as she played solitaire on her Kindle. I could tell I’d begun to brew something more. Her game slowed as small oral vignettes of her own family history emerged piecemeal and at random until she was telling me complete stories of times growing up in Storm Lake, Iowa on the farm. Each story she told seemed to revive another she’d perhaps never told another. The kids she played with in the church across the street and the scolding of the pastor for playing hide and seek among the pews. The memories of her parents and aunts and great grandparents were flowing in alternating waves of sadness and laughter. Though they weren’t poetic, they were the stories of her life, and by distant relation, those I valued as my own.

Each of us has a story to tell. But in these electronic days, few take the time to listen in the way stories should be told. Indeed, storytelling, the old fashioned way that families passed on their histories, values and expectations to the next generation, is a lost art.

And out of 24 billion computers in the world, only a handful will find it important to pass on the stories of people who will otherwise soon be buried with them undiscovered and untold forever.

It was Monday morning again, and my day to return to the low income senior center where my outreach first introduced me to Lois and her many children. With Christopher tucked neatly under my arm, and a handful of refrigerator labels, I arrived, closed up, and affixed a note on the door.

It read “Back in 2 hours.”

There are so many older Americans whose fame was never counted by measures of celebrity, celluloid or column inches in fabulous magazines, but whose life stories are noteworthy nonetheless. And I have found that the aged ones who have never sought an audience for them, sometimes have the most engaging of all to tell.

Especially if you will take the time, ask, and then sit back with a coffee and some mustard toast, and listen.

And bring your computer.

Don Miller #mygivingstory