Fell so deeply, completely…living in two worlds at once…the pull of the story both real and imagined led to many late nights reading.
“…I believe that the past echoes into our present time if only we turn our ear toward its stories.” (403)
It’s the stories of our lives that we continually share. Old stories from our youth, new stories of children, family, conquests, and disappointments. What we share strengthens our ties to our past and enriches our future. The stories are important.
“Doesn’t writing these cards make you think of how someone might sum up your life? If two hundred years from now someone made a story card of it. What would it say?” (362)
So, how do we want to be remembered? What will my legacy be? What is the sum of my life? Who will write my story? How will it be shared? So often we look at our past through rose colored lenses…reimagining the past to fit the person we’ve become, not who we were. How does that benefit the story? Isn’t it our humanity that makes the story worth sharing again and again? “We die once when the last breath leaves our bodies. We die a second time when the last person speaks our name.” from ‘The Book of Lost Friends’ - Lisa Wingate (374).
“I looked much closer at our collective ideas that survival merits some kind of worthiness, that everything happens for a reason, and that our lives are destined to end up in certain ways. I still don’t know the solid truth to any of those ideas…” (399)
Survival. Like a wildfire that picks and chooses which house to destroy, which to save, how does destiny choose its survivors? Or does it? Are we on a fixed loop, a convoluted path, or something entirely different? If we survive, what do we make of our surviving? How do we make a life out of loss?
There is so much more I could say. I had as many questions as the characters in the novel. Yet, I think that survival isn’t always about tragedy. Survival could be finding ways to live amidst pain and heartache, misunderstandings. How will the future write those stories?
