There is a beautiful line in the Pulitzer Prize & Tony Award winning musical “Hamilton” “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” We all need that person. But do we all have it?       I got to thinking today as I turned on the news and saw there was yet another “active shooter” situation (which turned out to be a person with a concealed weapon) on Ohio State University’s Campus. Who remembers your name? Who tells the wonderful things about you if you don’t survive? It made me think, “who will tell these stories for these wonderful people if the worst should happen?”

     I was that person for 3 wonderful people. Laura was the first. She and I grew up together from birth and like she knew she wouldn’t grow to be old, she entrusted me with her life’s story. From the very start, I knew it all. So when it was time to tell it, & time to break through the grief & tears with laughter and smiles, I was prepared & had the ammunition in my arsenal. I told her story. I lived, she died, & I told her story. The prom dates, the hijinks in the neighborhood, the sleepovers, breaking into her grandma’s house with her sister on a repeated basis. It’s all there for posterity in her life’s story. 

     Next was Jen. Jennifer was beautiful & too young to go. But her Mom wasn’t ready to be the one to tell her story, she had to tell her husband’s only 6 months later. So I learned Jen’s, and I loved Jen and her beautiful soul as her body gave out and she passed on from this life to the next magical one. And I’ll proudly tell her story again and again. The house in Pacific Beach, CA. The handsome boy she longed to go on the date with “someday”, the Justin Timberlake concert she held on to the memories of, the group of girls she adored from school, her sister Stephanie she cherished so very much, & how she knew Steph was going to have a little girl and that little girl would know her “Aunt Jen” long after she was gone. 

    Then there was Matt. Otherwise known simply as “Brunson”. Just his last name. I spent most of his 49th year with him learning his story and knowing how he’d prefer it to be told. How he wanted his family to know how he truly felt…about them, about death, about being sick. About how the arts organizations he supported were his true passions. How he was so proud of his early work in the field of pancreatic transplant surgery and colorectal surgery, but the Tumors…those were his real bread and butter. We discussed how we would write it all down. A blog maybe…yes, Miranda…maybe you should look into starting a blog. Get this ship sailing. You’d be “good at this stuff”. 

So who lives, who dies, who tells your story? Only you decide. And me? Well I guess I’m just getting good at telling this “GOOD STUFF”. Maybe it is MY bread and butter… and that would just be “the good stuff.”