Knowing how to end a story...

Someone (Ernest Kurtz I believe...) once wrote that there are two parts to recovery: the story telling part and the story listening part....and the only reason alcoholics are willing to sit and listen to someone else's story is that they know that one day they are going to get to tell their story.

Today I've been doing a little unpublicized AA marathon... My wife's away for about a week and I've used this time to go to some extra meetings and just today I've heard four different stories. Three of them filled my heart with hope and the fourth made my stomach ache and blood pressure almost pop a vein (once I calm down over that share, I might post more about that one!)

Today, I also had the blessing of an AA friend giving me a copy of a short story that he'd spent months crafting and I was touched that trusted me with reading it. He was quite proud of the work he'd done and had received some very positive reviews of it by some close friends. I waited until all my chores were done this afternoon and then I took the short story out to my hammock in the back yard and devoted myself to my friend's story telling.

The story was powerfully and artfully written but it's ending was one of those that make some people --including me--quite angry because it didn't end with all the loose ends tied up and all the details neatly concluded. For the remainder of the day, I tried to figure out if I really liked the story even with the ending as he chose to tell it. Most of the time I thought there was something missing from the ending and that I just needed to figure out how he could fix it.

But then the way home from the meeting tonight, I began to think back to several stories told to me by two of my sponsors over the last six years and I began to realize that they too ended their stories in a way very very (annoyingly!) similar to my friend's short story. And trust me, my sponsor's are all great storytellers! Tonight, I realized that what made all three of them great storytellers is that they knew when and how to end the story.

I heard Earle tell the story of his last drink so often that I felt as though I was there. Toward the end of a long Saturday of drinking a huge amount of alcohol, he was preparing to barbecue steaks out in the back of his house and as he was walking up the steps to his barbecue, he looked down at the half empty glass in his hand and realized that he should go back and refill the glass before continuing up the steps. As he was turning around, he heard a voice saying "That's your last drink."

That was the end of the story of his last drink and the beginning of his sobriety story, which by the way, happened on June 15, 1953--two days before I was born. I didn't realize until after Earle was dead that the story ended without some important details. That is, his "last drink" story didn't explain whether he finished that "last" drink! I mean, did he just put it down and/or throw it away and stay sober for the next 49 years of his life? Did he finish it off? Either way, it still would have been the last drink! Enquiring minds want to know things like this!

I'm so glad that he was dead before these stupid questions floated to the surface of my consciousness! I really don't need to know the answer to questions like that. Which is why I think that particular story was so effective and powerful. He knew when to stop his storytelling and let the story have the power it had without needless embellishment or distraction.

Another one of my sponsors, a sponsee of Earle's who was like a son to Earle for many years, once told me a story about one day when he was a couple of years sober: Dave was a lawyer and had some sort of brief or pleading that needed to be drafted and filed with the court by the end of the week. For some reason, this particular task was something that he just couldn't bring himself to complete. He put the file on his guest chair at the beginning of the week so as to keep reminding himself that it had to be done by the end of the week. But he just didn't want to do it. And it just sat there. Waiting.

As the end of the week was quickly approaching and the task still undone, he called Earle and explained his dilemma: he had to do this brief but he didn't want to do it! Earle's reply was, "So you have to do the brief before Friday?" Dave responded, "Yes!" Earle then advised, "Well, then do it!" And then Dave explained that the problem was that he didn't want to write this brief! And then Earle responded, "Well, then don't do it!" To which an exasperated Dave responded, "But it has to be done by the end of the day Friday! Tomorrow!"

Earle paused while Dave almost exploded with frustration over this old man's total incapacity to actually listen to the facts as presented (here I'm sympathetic because both Earle and Dave have brought about the same level of extreme frustration in me with their question/answer techniques from Hell...) and then said to Dave, "Well, then do it!" I honestly can't remember where this back and forth ended because I stopped listening well before the expected "ending" because I already knew the point of the story. [No, I'm not going to tell you!]

It was only tonight that I realized that I never learned if Dave did or didn't write the god damned brief! And I realized tonight that the story was great because Dave knew when to stop the storytelling and let the story take a life of its own.

My friend Doug has joined the ranks of some truly great storytellers. He's learned how to end a story in time.

Mike L.