Host: Jenifer Hixson
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift playing]
Jenifer: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jenifer Hixson.
The Moth is true stories shared with a live audience. In this hour, stories from our GrandSLAMs across the country, which feature winners from our open-mic StorySLAMs. Kentucky, Wisconsin, Colorado, New York, California and Minnesota. A soldier, a doctor, prisons and battlefields, and eBay.
Our first story is from Louisville, where we partner with public radio station WFPL. This is Fred Johnson.
[cheers and applause]
Fred: [00:00:45] When I walked out of the Jeffersonville City Jail, I knew one thing for certain, [audience laughter] and that's my wife was going to be pissed. [audience laughter] The night before, I had performed a ritual that I had done on the anniversary of 9/11 ever since I got back from Iraq in 2007. And that was a shot of bourbon for each of my three most dearest fallen comrades. The first shot of bourbon was Maker's Mark. And it was for Bill Wood, who loved Maker's Mark. Bill died in Dora, Iraq, in 2005.
The second shot of bourbon was Woodford, which is my favorite bourbon, because Joe Fenty didn't like to drink bourbon. He died on a mountaintop in Afghanistan in 2006. Joe was my dearest friend. And then, my last shot of bourbon was Basil Hayden, because it's so smooth. And Freeman Gardner died so young on the streets of Amiriya, Baghdad, in 2007.
I finished my shots, and I had a couple of beers, and I sat and thought, and I said to myself, I'm going to get in my car and I'm going to drive it into the Ohio River, so I can be with my dead friends in Valhalla. Of course, a policeman stopped me and put me in jail. That's the reason why I was in jail. [audience laughter]
So, the next morning when I got out, I called home and my wife answered. Didn't let me say a word. She said, "You're going to therapy." What she didn't say, but strongly inferred, is that, “You're going to go to therapy now or you're never going to see me or your daughter again.”
My wife had long said that I had PTSD, that when I went to Iraq that I changed and when I got back from Afghanistan in 2011, that I had gotten worse. Now, my wife is a PhD psychologist. She's the director of behavioral health at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in charge of all the behavioral health [audience chuckles] at Fort Knox. And so, they diagnose people with PTSD.
And I said, "You know, honey, what do you know?" [audience laughter] It's perfectly normal to freak out with your back to the door, because you can't see behind you. It's normal to look at every passerby to see if they have a weapon in their hand or if they're a threat. And it's normal to have your friends who had died in combat revolve through your mind in an endless cycle of despair. It's normal to every now and then think about putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger.
Now, I did not have PTSD. I didn't believe in it. You don't go to war and serve your country and get sick. Particularly, a colonel who had been in the army at the time, 28 years, and had prepared his entire adult life to serve in combat. But I went to therapy, because I felt that if I didn't, I knew I would lose my wife and my daughter.
Now, there are three things that I learned whenever I was in therapy. First, is that I needed it. I was on this downward spiral of self-destruction. I needed to do something. The second was that it helped, that my therapist gave me cognitive tools to help mitigate the challenges that I had, particularly with anger. And three, that it wasn't quite enough.
One day I was talking to a fellow colonel who said a derogatory comment about one of my buddies, and I went after him. I got pulled back before I could do anything, and I got in trouble, bad trouble. It looked like I was going to possibly leave the army in dishonorable conditions. It was about that time that my psychiatrist said, "Hey, Fred, have you tried medication?" Now, that was another red line for me. I said, "You know, I can do it myself. You know, I'm a soldier, I'm self-disciplined." But obviously, the situation I had with that colonel proved otherwise. I was again in a now or never moment of, if I don't do something, then I could leave the army in a bad way.
When I first took the pills and the medication, ironically, it was just like a firefight. There is nothing that brings greater clarity than the snap of a bullet by your head and its impact two inches away. And that clarity is followed by the slowing down of the world. So, you can see it in its full spectrum, you can anticipate dangers, and then you apply your training to do your work. Well, that pill provided me the clarity and the slowing down, and therapy gave me the tools that I needed to make the right decisions.
After a while, my buddies, I remember them only whenever I wanted to. They weren't revolving in my head. Shooting myself was a ridiculous notion that never entered my mind again. And then, one morning, I woke up after an awesome night's sleep. I'm laying next to my wife, which is something we'd never do, pillows propped up, drinking coffee. I look over to her and I touch her and I say, "So, this is what it's like to be really normal?" And she says, "Yes." And now, I have this awesome job in this greatest city in the world, doing the thing that I love most and that's bringing art to the people and the places that need it most.
I feel incredibly blessed, remarkably happy, and incredibly normal. I thank God every day for that night in the Jeffersonville Jail and for the cop that pulled me over. I thank God for my wife who had the courage to give me that ultimatum, and I thank God for giving me the clarity to make the right decision in my now or never moments. Thank you, guys, very much for listening.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:06:54] That was Fred Johnson. Fred is a retired infantry colonel, who served in the US army for 29 years. He did two combat tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, and a deployment to Bosnia. He wrote a book about it all. It's called Five Wars. You can find a link to it on our website, themoth.org.
Next up is a story from Vivienne Anderson. She told it at the Milwaukee GrandSLAM, where we partner with Wisconsin Public Radio. Here's Vivienne.
[cheers and applause]
Vivienne: [00:07:26] So, it's like one of those old war movies, where the grizzled old sergeant is walking through the forest, and he stops, and he looks at his men and he says, "It's too quiet." Except I am in sixth grade, and I have just come home from school, and walked into my house. And it is indeed too quiet. Like, my dog is not running up to me throwing that little party that your dog throws for you. [audience laughter] Even my refrigerator is like, "Dude, it's getting warm in here, but I am not going to click on and draw attention to me." [audience laughter]
So, I know something's wrong, and I don't know what it is, and I drop my bag and I head straight for the kitchen. Because if I am about to meet my doom, I am going to have a snack first. [audience laughter] I get to the kitchen, I open up the refrigerator, and I pull out the milk and I am about to take a swig right out of the container. I see out of the corner of my eye, I see my mother sitting at our dining room table. She is sitting perfectly still, perfectly silently, like this big black widow spider just waiting for her favorite prey to come home. [audience chuckles] And spread out in front of her is the contents of my stash. [audience chuckles]
Not my drugs, but the things that make me feel most okay about myself and about living in this world. There are my bras and my panties and my nylons and my skirts and my tops. And just as I make eye contact with my mother, all eight of them, [audience laughter] she starts, "What the hell's the matter with you? What kind of a faggot are you? I'm going to take you to a therapist and he's going to fix you. You're a real son of a [beep] You know that?" That one was always my personal favorite, because technically, I couldn't argue. [audience laughter]
This was not the first time, nor would it be the last time that I would endure one of these sessions. And they could go on for hours. And the way I would make it through was I made myself a promise. I promised that as soon as I could, as soon as I turned 18 and I could get out of the house, I would do it and I would go and I would have the sex change operation that I so desperately needed, and I would never look back. As long as I could make that promise to myself, I had hope. That was sixth grade.
Seventh grade, two important things happened to me. The first was that I sprouted from about five foot nothing up to about six feet tall. The other thing that happened was my voice dropped. It went from being like happy little kid voice to being somewhere between James Earl Jones and Barry White. [audience laughter] Now, when Barry White's voice comes out of a 14-year-old white boy's body, people tend to notice. [audience chuckles] And they tend to like it.
I mean, I had a girlfriend in high school, who referred to me as having a pure sex voice. [audience chuckles] Later still, when I became a pastor and I would start preaching on Sunday mornings, “Yeah, baby. [audience laughter] Jesus going to love you just right.” [audience laughter] Unfortunately for me, towards the end of my seventh-grade year, I realized that at just over six feet tall and with Barry White's voice, that there was no group of women anywhere on the planet that would accept me as one of their own. I also realized that I had zero chance of ever walking into a ladies' room without being hit with purses and shrieks of terror. As soon as I had that realization, I no longer had hope, which brings me to act 3.
When the curtain goes up on act 3, it finds me sitting alone in my bedroom after school. I am surrounded by the contents of my stash, and I have an X-ACTO knife in one hand, and an upturned wrist, and I am crying. I am crying big embarrassing sobs, just tears running down my cheeks, because I don't want to die. And that realization in that moment is perfect. Like, that is exactly what you want in that moment. I don't want to die, but at the same time, I did not know how to go on living. I knew that something had to change and I didn't know what it could be, I didn't know how to make that change.
And I ended up in the next 20 minutes making a bargain with myself. And the bargain was this that only part of me was going to die that night. Only the best part of me. Only the part of me that people liked, only the part of me that contained joy, only the part of me that was feminine. She got bound up, and buried alive deep in the back of my mind where even the most dedicated therapist would never, ever find her. I wiped away the tears and I bucked up and I endured for almost 20 more years until one day when I realized that I could no longer keep up my side of the bargain that I had made with myself that day, and that I no longer had to. Be well, Milwaukee.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:14:04] That was Vivienne Anderson. Vivienne is no longer a pastor. These days, she's turned her attentions to real estate in Madison, Wisconsin. Vivienne's bio may be one of my all-time favorites. She wrote Vivienne can fly, she can forgive sins, and she can sell a large house in a single day. She's basically a superhero in heels. And having met Vivienne, I can vouch for the bio. It's all true, even the flying.
Next up, a college student in prison and a high-stakes eBay bidding war.
[upbeat music]
Jay: [00:14:52] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Jenifer: [00:15:03] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jenifer Hixson.
Pam Burrell is the winner of the very first Denver GrandSLAM, where we partner with public radio station KUNC. Pam's a soft-spoken woman, but absolutely took down the house. Here's Pam Burrell, live in Colorado.
[cheers and applause]
Pam: [00:15:26] I didn't know what I wanted to do after high school, but my mother did. [audience laughter] She decided that I was going to attend a prestigious college, study pre-med, and become a doctor. I didn't have the courage to tell her that I lacked the self-confidence to make life and death decisions for other people. I also lacked the courage to resist her plan. [audience laughter] But I did draw one non-negotiable line in the sand. If I had to go to college, it was going to be a traditional black college in a large city.
On my first day as a scholarship student at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, [audience laughter] I discovered that I was the only black woman in entering class. [audience laughter] I also discovered that my dorm room had been reconfigured, so that my roommate and I wouldn't share a bedroom. I asked the residence manager, “Why ours was the only room that had been changed around?” And she said, "Well, we thought you'd feel more comfortable with that arrangement." So, from my very first day, I was made to feel that I was an outsider who needed to be treated differently from my peers. I didn't know how to navigate that situation, and I spent the next four years trying to break a code I didn't understand.
In my sophomore year, I volunteered with 11 other students at the Washington State Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison. The main goal of the program was to help soon-to-be-released prisoners adapt to life on the outside. I had found my people. I have never felt more at home or more appreciated than I did with those men. They had lost control of their destiny. They were anxious scared and confused, but they were determined to succeed. They had each other's backs and supported each other through addictions, and through helplessness, and rage. Talking to them was the highlight of my week for almost two years.
I never missed a meeting. Then one night, I drove to our designated meeting place on campus, and no one was there. I immediately recognized what had happened. The Ohio Players, one of the biggest things to hit campus in years, were performing that night. I passed streams of concertgoers, as I drove the empty van to the prison. I was surprised by the intensity of my affection for these men. Looking back, I think I realized that they were where they were, because they had acted on their feelings, and I was where I was because I had not.
When I got to the prison, I decided to seat all of the men together in one group. As the 30 men settled in, one of the men said, "Where is everybody? I told them about the concert.” And another man said, "Don't you like the Ohio Players?" [audience chuckles] I said, "They're one of my favorite bands." And he said, "Then what you doing here, fool?" [audience chuckles] And we all laughed. I said, "Well, I'd rather be here. I love you, guys. I care about you, and I want to do everything I can to help you succeed."
The room went deathly still, no one spoke. Finally, I asked the group what was wrong. One of the men began to cry and said, "In my whole life, no one has ever told me that they loved me or that they cared about me." Then, one by one, every man began to cry. After a while, one of the men pointed to the guard who was monitoring our group and said, "Look, even old baldy is crying." [audience laughter]
Eventually they went their way and I went mine. I don't know if that program helped those men, but I know it helped me. I still lack courage and self-confidence. But when I'm afraid or feeling challenged by the world, I think back to that special group of foster brothers of mine, and I tell myself, "Hey guys, we can get through this together." Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:21:15] Pam Burrell works at the post office, and is also a singer songwriter. She had an incredibly passionate group of friends in the audience that night. I saw at least two of them crying with joy when she won. You could just tell Pam is a good friend.
This next story is by New York City StorySLAM legend Steve Zimmer. He's told over 100 Moth SLAM stories. And important to note, they're pretty much all really good. He's got a couple GrandSLAM wins under his belt.
[cheers and applause]
Live from New York, where we partner with WNYC, here's Steve Zimmer.
Steve: [00:21:55] I've never been married, or lived with someone, or owned real estate, or taken a true vacation, or purchased brand new furniture. [audience chuckles] These are sources of concern for my girlfriend Megan, when she moves in with me in July 2014. [audience laughter] So, four months later, it's November and she's still there. [audience laughter] We need to get a desk because Megan's a freelance book editor, and so she has a lot of papers that can't go on my desk. [audience laughter] And so, I go on eBay to look at used desks. The very first one is this beautiful Danish wood desk, expiring in five minutes and currently at $300. So, I called Megan in, and we're like, "This is worth way more than $300." And so, we put in a max bid of $503 to outmaneuver the crowd at $501. [audience chuckles]
Now, if we don't win the desk, then afterward eBay will send me an auction alert saying, "You've lost" or "You let it slip away." [audience laughter] These alerts never used to bother me, but now that I'm 52 years old, they feel really insightful. [audience laughter] So, with three minutes left, we were the high bidder. I start to get worried, because Megan and I have never made a big purchase together. Our previous attempt at a big purchase resulted in the Bisley incident. One month ago, Megan wanted to get a $400 Bisley filing cabinet for the apartment. So, I went on Craigslist and found a used Bisley for $50, and I texted Megan to meet me at the seller's address in Kew Gardens [unintelligible 00:23:52]. It would be a long subway ride home, but mostly above ground. [audience chuckles] So, with the right attitude, it could be a date. [audience laughter]
Unfortunately, Megan tracked down the Craigslist ad, which I purposely not showed her, because it made the Bisley look damaged. [audience laughter] She was like, "NFW." That night, we had a big argument, and Megan pointed out that, “I'll spend 90 hours on the internet to save 10 bucks, yet pay $1,000 fines for doing my taxes a day late,” and that I was a petty, miserable person and was slowly making her miserable. [audience chuckles] So, I was like, "Fine, we'll get the new Bisley." [audience laughter] It turned into our worst fight. And now, a month later, our relationship still hasn't recovered yet. We're trying to buy a desk together in an auction in which I'm scared of both winning and losing. [audience chuckles] I'm thinking, it's too bad, Megan and I didn't meet when we were younger, and not such difficult people, and there was still time. [audience chuckles]
Just then, eBay sends an alert saying, there's two minutes left, and we've been outbid at $510. Now, things get tricky. I'm afraid to stop bidding, because I know Megan will get mad, and Megan's afraid to continue bidding because she knows that I'll initially go along to keep the peace, but then afterward, I'll be resentful and act like a little bitch. [audience laughter] So, neither of us says anything. We're locked in passive aggressive stalemate, which I know from my parents' marriage can be a surprisingly stable relationship platform. [audience laughter] But we don't want that.
And so, we just sit there and just staring at this image of the desk, which had been perfectly maintained by the previous owner, who must have understood how hard it is to find a desk you really like. And Megan says, "It's beautiful." And I say, "It is beautiful." And the eBay auction alert says, "There's still time." [audience chuckles] So, I'm like, "Let's bid $800." And Megan's like, "Really?" And I'm like, "Yes, it's worth it, especially when you factor in the money that we saved from not getting the Bisley." [audience laughter] And so, we bid $806, and settle in for the last minute of the auction. With 10 seconds left, we're the high bidder. And then, the price goes to $1,100 [audience aw] and $1,300 before closing at $1,520. [audience aw]
Megan and I sit there motionless, still locked in the embrace that we instinctively initiated when the price went over $1,000. [audience laughter] We tried to make sense of what just happened. eBay, however, understands instantly and sends and issues an alert saying that we're losers. [audience laughter] And it's true. We're older and have had lives defined by regret, [audience chuckles] but there's still time. So, three months later, I bid on an engagement ring that had been perfectly maintained by the previous owner. [audience laughter] And this time, it doesn't slip away. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:27:30] That was Steve Zimmer. He lives in New York City with his wife and family. He always tells me he thinks he's about to retire from The Moth StorySLAM, that he thinks he's finally run out of stories. But I think he probably has at least another hundred. Anyway, I hope so.
Are any of these stories reminding you of stories of your own? That's what happens at Moth shows. You hear something and you think, oh yeah, that reminds me of that time. So, once you find your story, think it through, make sure it has stakes, a strong beginning and ending, that it involves some sort of change, then call our pitch line and give us a one-minute version. You can do it right at our website at themoth.org, or call us at 877-799-M-O-T-H. That's 877-799-6684. We're looking forward to hearing from you.
When we come back, an ex-con, a lesbian mom, and an ER doc.
[upbeat music]
Jay: [00:28:48] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Jenifer: [00:28:59] You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jenifer Hixson. This next story is from Tony Ciprien from the San Francisco GrandSLAM, where we partner with public radio stations KQED and KALW. The theme was Never Again.
[cheers and applause]
It was a really loaded theme for a man who spent a very long time in prison atoning for gang violence. Here's Tony Ciprien.
Tony: [00:29:24] Growing up in Watts, California, you're bound to have a never again. [audience chuckles] I could be up here telling you about the 10-year-old who found himself behind the wheel of a stolen 1963 Falcon and crashed. I could be standing here telling you about the 12-year-old who was arrested for possession of a firearm only to have his name changed by the booking officer. I could be standing here telling you about the 15-year-old who was in possession of a stolen meat slicer. [audience laughter] Nah, I'm going to tell you about the 17-year-old who was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced for his role in a gang-related homicide.
Mind you, he fell asleep during trial for two reasons. One, lack of sleep. Two, lack of hope. But the judge, she made sure that he was awake during the sentencing phase. She said, "Will the defendant please rise?" There I stood, all 120 pounds of me. She said, "You've been a very busy young man." She said, "It is here that I sentence you by the power vested in this court to 26 years to life in the California Department of Corrections." She said, "But I'm going to forego the last part of this sentence because of your baby face and your small stature. I hereby sentence you to the California Youth Authority, where you will remain until age 25." That time, a youth authority was short spent.
By age 19, I found myself standing in San Quentin, one of California's most dangerous prisons. 4D20, 4th Tier, 20th Cell, D Block. Went through the cell bars. I could see wind surfers. [audience chuckles] Now, that was freedom, I thought, something that I would never see again. At age 24, I found hope through a friend who threw me a lifeline. Hope, understanding, and compassion. No matter what, never again stories I may have told her. At age 29, that hope started to fade, for I saw men dying around me, I saw a man die from an abscess tooth being pulled. He went to the dentist, they pulled the tooth, the poison released into his bloodstream, and he died.
I saw a man die from a heart attack with early warning signs. "Hey man, I'm having chest pains over here." "Hey, fill out a sick call slip." Monday morning, they found him dead in his bed. All this hopelessness started to solidify when the governor said, “The only way that a life term prisoner would ever get out of prison is in a pine box.” I turned to drugs for a temporary escape. By age 35, a friend came to me and said, "Hey man, I've been found suitable. I'm going home." Suitability. Every life term prisoner wants to hear that word. If he could do it, so could I. I immediately armed myself with a can of bullshit repellent. And bullshit repellent works like this. "Hey man, I got a joint to smoke." [audience chuckles] "I'm cool. I don't need that." "Hey man, these dudes talking shit about us." "So what?" [audience laughter] I then joined every self-help group I could in order to find the real me.
By age 40, I walked into the parole board. Found suitable. By age 41, the governor had taken it. After that 150-day wait, at age 42, I went back into the parole board. Found suitable again. Governor took it again. At age 43, I'm home. Never, ever a fucking again.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:34:14] That was Tony Ciprien at the San Francisco GrandSLAM with the theme Never Again.
When we were going over his story a week or so before the show, Tony shared a detail that's really stayed with me. After serving his sentence, Tony moved to Berkeley with his wife and got a manufacturing job that he loves. He clocks out at 04:30, which often puts him right in some nasty bumper to bumper commuter traffic at 05:00. He says he looks around at the other cars and sees the people in there all miserable. But Tony says he never minds that traffic, because in the California State Penitentiary, 05:00 PM is roll call. When you have to stand outside your cell and yell out your prison number to the CO. It's a really depressing part of each day times 26 years. So, Tony says he is just fine with sitting in that traffic at 05:00.
[uplifting music]
[cheers and applause]
Our next story is from Pam Colby in Minnesota. She won the GrandSLAM at the Fitzgerald Theater. Here's Pam.
Pam: [00:35:22] When I was growing up, often my family would drive the long slow roads from northern Minnesota to Minneapolis to visit my grandma. I loved the visits, but the drive was hell. Sitting in the backseat among my sisters, trying to sit still, keep my hands to myself. [audience chuckles] By the time we arrived, I was a wound-up spring ready to pop. [audience chuckles] Sometimes when my grandma saw me coming, she looked afraid. [audience laughter]
See, a few years back when I was flying through her living room, I crashed into her, knocking her to the floor. [audience chuckles] As I came out of my imaginary world, I saw her down there, [audience chuckles] awkward, unable to get up, embarrassment in the air as the adults came scrambling to get her to her feet. [audience laughter] See, back in 1938, when she was just 28, she was struck with the polio virus, and she was paralyzed from the neck down within 24 hours. It took her years to regain her muscles, but she learned to walk again, kind of like Roosevelt. It was more of a balancing act. But she looked like she could walk. [audience laughter]
What she lacked in her walking, she made up in her talking. [audience laughter] I loved to listen to her tell stories, and I could stay up late in the night listening to my mom and my grandma talk. I'd wait, I'd want to hear the ghost stories. My eyes getting wider, like, how when great grandma died, Aunt Olga saw her spirit walk right out of her body. [audience laughter] Or, then there were the ghost stories from Sweden that always involved a rocking chair that rocked after the person had died like, "I'm still here, y'all, [audience laughter] back and forth without a soul in sight.”
But really, when I graduated from college, I decided to move to Minneapolis, really because my grandma was here. But also, because I knew there was a lesbian community here. [audience chuckles] It was the early 1980s, and I wasn't really out, especially to my grandma. [audience chuckles] But she seemed to get me, like, praising me when I cut off my long hippie hair and going back to my tomboy look. We didn't really communicate through eye contact. Nobody in my family used eye contact. [audience laughter] That would be too intimate. [audience laughter] But when I brought my new girlfriend over for dinner, she served us on the good China. [audience chuckles] And in 1990, when my lesbian partner and I decided to have a child, and me, the butchy one, became pregnant, [audience laughter] my aunt and my grandma gave us a baby shower. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]
When baby Joel was born, my grandma was no longer able to walk into the hospital, but she came in her wheelchair, and we set him down in her lap. She held onto him tight. About four years after that, on the most beautiful day in Minnesota, the birds were singing. It was April. Spring finally. Daffodils, tulips. I was out running errands with Joel, and I decided to swing by and see her. She was in a nursing home now, falling due to the secondary effects of polio. We stopped in. She wasn't in her chair, which my son liked to push her around in. She was in bed. I visited her often, and I said, "How you doing, Grandma?" And she said, "All right."
There was a big plate of food and a piece of cherry pie. And Joel said, "Great Grandma, can I have your cherry pie?" And she said, "Yeah." And then, I watched her watch him eat it. She was smiling, which was nice, because she hadn't been very happy lately. And then, suddenly, full on eye contact. [audience laughter] "You know, I really don't have an appetite anymore." I said, "Yeah, it's okay, Grandma. You don't have to eat. You've had a good, long life."
The next morning, I was at work and I got the call. She died. I went, and I said goodbye to her body, and then I went home. I felt kind of like a big old stone sitting on the couch, that cloud of loneliness and sadness coming down and thinking about her not being in my life anymore. Then I looked across the room at the rocking chair, [audience chuckles] and it was moving [audience laughter] ever so slightly without a soul in sight. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jenifer: [00:41:12] Pam Colby is a filmmaker based in the Twin Cities. She teaches cinema and documentary filmmaking at Independent Filmmaker Project, Minnesota. To see a picture of Pam's son with her mom, visit themoth.org. Her current doc project is Not in My Lifetime. It's about growing up, queer marriage, and the impact of becoming legal.
Our final story is from Bess Stillman, who's an ER doctor in New York City. She's a really warm and funny person. But this particular story is intense. Please be warned, this story deals with the aftermath of gun violence. Here's Bess.
[applause]
Bess: [00:41:54] I know what happens after you die. I take your family into a quiet room with Kleenex, and then I say the word dead. Not expired, because you were a person, not milk. And not passed on, because families always want to believe, that means I just transferred you to another hospital. Dead, I have to say it. And that's really all they taught us about how to break bad news in medical school. One-hour lecture.
So, we learnt by watching our teaching physicians. We were their constant companions in this theater of the bereaved lurking in doorways and bedsides, and the hospital's ER waiting to see how soft they made their voices. When did they touch someone on the shoulder? How much medical jargon did they use before getting to the word dead?
When you train to become a doctor, they don't really teach you about death. They teach you how to prevent it, how to fight it, how to say it, not how to face it. So, on one of my first nights as a teaching physician in the emergency room, as we worked on the body of a 16-year-old boy with eight bullet holes in his chest and abdomen, we were almost angry at his body. Is he breathing? Is he bleeding? Is his heart beating? I go to the head of the bed, and I plunge a breathing tube down his airway, and I hook him up to the respirator that breathes for him.
vWe put a large bore IV in each arm, an even larger one in his groin, and through that we start pressure bagging type O negative blood, just trying to replace what he's lost. We put tubes everywhere. I call for another unit of blood. But no matter how fast we work, we can't work fast enough. The monitor starts to sound this shrill insect whine that's meant to alert us the patient is crashing, which we already know. So, it feels less like a warning and more like a rebuke. And then, we lose his blood pressure and his pulse. But he's 16.
So, I perform a trauma Hail Mary. I grab a 15-blade scalpel, and I make an incision from the nipple all the way down to the bed. I take the scissors, I cut through the intercostal membranes. We take the rib spreaders, put them between the ribs and we crank his chest open. There's this huge gush of blood, and then a moment of stillness, like the second after a lightning strike.
Even his blood smells metallic, like ozone. I reach my hands into his chest, and I put them on his still heart, and I begin squeezing it for him, feeling for damage. Then I take my right hand and I sweep it down the length of his aorta. It is so riddled with holes that the frayed pieces just disintegrate in my hands.
The first time I had to be the one to break bad news to a patient, I was in my last year of residency training. I remember I had to do it in the patient's room, because his adult daughter refused to leave his bedside. So, I said, "I'm sorry, he's dead. We did everything we could." And then, I was supposed to step out of the room, give her a few moments of privacy. But I was paralyzed, rooted to the spot by this sense of failure and loss.
When I looked in the bed, I couldn't stop imagining my own father in it. My supervisor must have seen what was going on, because she grabbed me by the arm, dragged me outside and said, "Don't you ever do that again. Don't ever pretend that grief belongs to you when it doesn't. One day, the person you love is going to be in that stretcher. But if today is not the day. You say you're sorry, you mean it, but then you have to walk away."
I look up from the boy and see that my own audience has formed. They wait to see what I do next. I realize in front of me is a gaping hole, and the boy's family will probably be here very soon. So, I turn to the surgery resident and I say, "Listen, as fast as you can, you just have to get this kid closed up." Not 10 minutes go by when we hear the sound of a woman demanding to be let in. We are not ready. Security tries to keep her out. We are shoving gauze, and surgical supplies, and tubing into giant trash bags, but she is a tsunamic force. We barely have this boy closed up and half covered in a sheet.
When I see her standing in the doorway, clearly his mother. She goes absolutely quiet. "I'm sorry, he's dead. We did everything we could." She takes a running leap towards the body. A nurse at the head of the bed notices a large needle still attached to the suture holding him together, and she plucks it off the table just before his mother lands on top of his body, trying to protect it with her own. She starts keening. It's a terrible sound. “I'm sorry, he's dead. We did everything we could.”
She slides off his body. I see her put the boy's fingers to her mouth just briefly before holding them against her cheek. I start to leave as soon as the social worker enters, motioning for the rest of the crowd to follow me out. I think that's what they can learn from watching me, is how to walk away. And without a moment's break, I go to see the next patient, because there are 40 people in the waiting room who all want immediate attention, and they can't know that I still feel the dead boy's heart in my hands like an anchor. But I know if I don't put it down now, I may never remember that this loss doesn't belong to me. One day, grief will be mine, but not tonight. Thank you.
[applause]
Jenifer: [00:49:12] That was Bess Stillman. Bess is an emergency physician and writer.
[soft melodious music]
That's it for this special GrandSLAM edition of The Moth Radio Hour. Go find a StorySLAM in your city, put your name in the hat, and maybe you'll join us here next time.
[Uncanny Valley theme music by The Drift]
Jay: [00:49:46] Your host this hour was Jenifer Hixson. Jenifer also directed the stories in the show. The rest of The Moth’s directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, and Meg Bowles. Production support from Mooj Zadie.
Moth Stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Most Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Brad Mehldau, Tortoise, Alabama Shakes, RJD2, Boombox, and Regina Carter. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick, at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.
The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.