Host: Catherine Burns
[overture music]
Catherine: [00:00:12] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. This time, we have three stories about guiding lights, powerful voices and forces that shape us even when they can't be explained by science or logic. We're going to hear about a magical bird who played humans and often beat them at tic-tac-toe, and the story of a young murdered boy who appeared to his grieving mother in a series of dreams not long after his death.
But first, those voices that if we listen carefully, guide us in our decisions. Scientists are now finding that the nerves in our digestive system are so in tune with us that they act almost as a second brain. There's a reason we call it having a gut feeling.
Mr. André De Shields is a Tony Award winning actor. He told his story when our friends at the Broadway show Hadestown lent us their stage for the night in celebration of The Moth's 25th anniversary. André originated the role of the Wizard of Oz in the groundbreaking 1975 Broadway production of the Wiz. As we rehearsed his story, he realized that his biggest number from that show was thematically in line with The Moth story he was telling. And so, in a Moth, first, we let him end his story in a song. Here's André De Shields, live at the Kerr Theater.
[applause]
André: [00:01:37] It's the winter of 1946. Very early in the morning on a cold day in the month of January, colder than a witch's tit in a brass brazier, [audience laughter] the circumstances portend something momentous is about to happen, when, boom, I was evicted from my mother's womb. [audience laughter] A prodigious 12 pounds at birth. I would later learn that the weight of the 12 pounds was the weight of dreams deferred.
My parents brought 11 crumb snatchers into this world. Six boys, Sylvester, William, John, George, Jeffrey, André. Five girls, Desnee, Edwina, Mary, Carmen, Iris. When I was old enough to have an adult conversation with my parents. I asked my mother, “Mom, why did you have so many children?” She answered, “Well, André child, I told your father that if he ever put anything on it, he wasn't getting in here.” [audience laughter] “Mom, [audience laughter] is that really what you wanted to do, have so many children that you couldn't take care of them?” She says, “No, child, I wanted to be a chorus girl.” That's the term she used. She didn't say dancer. She said, “I wanted to be a chorus girl.” “Well, what happened?”
“Well, my mother, your grandmother said to me, “Ain’t no decent colored daughter of mine going to shuffle her way through life. We barely shuffled our way off the Plantation.” My mother being born around the turn of the 20th century. I had a similar conversation with my father, who wanted to be a singer, had a beautiful tenor voice and he sang in community choirs and in church. His father said to him, “How are you going to be a responsible father and husband pursuing an irresponsible career as a singer?” My father deferred his dreams.
I thought that somewhere in that mix of 11 children, the X and Y chromosomes of the deferred dreams of my parents would commingle, would coordinate, would collaborate, would consummate finally in the conception of one of the children who would manifest those deferred dreams. I'm lucky number nine. [audience laughter]
[applause]
My muse was my sister, Iris. I asked my mother, “Why did you name her Iris? It's such a beautiful name. Do you know what it means?” She says, “No, child. I just like the name.” Well, now we know that Iris is ancient Greek name identifying the Goddess of the Rainbow.
Now, Iris was the first person in the family to see me. I mean, really see me. She recognized my kingly potential as I recognized her warrior goddess attitude. Iris was my protection. When the bullies would come after me after school, Iris would say, “Ah-uh, leave my brother alone or I will tear your head off your neck and shove it up your ass.” [audience laughter]
Now, you have to appreciate that the 12 pounds I weighed at birth grew into a kind of jiggly belly. [audience laughter] Not because I was obese, but because I was malnourished. If you're not getting the right nutrition, if you were eating Wonder Bread and sugar all the time, your belly is going to swell. I would walk down the street and it would move, so they nicknamed me Jelly belly. Immediately after that, they shortened it to Jelly. Now, why Jelly? Because jam don't shake like that. [audience laughter]
I would go to school with my books on my hips, just jellying all over the place. [audience laughter] And of course, the guys who thought it was cool to be dumb would come after me. Iris came to me one day and she said, “You know what? I can help you. Take those books off your tootsie roll hips, [audience laughter] put them in a belt, throw it over your shoulder and everything's going to be all right.” She was my protection.
Iris was my inspiration. Iris introduced me to the adult life of blue lights in the basement. Iris taught me how to dance. We did the chicken, we did the Lindy, we did the Watusi, we did the Birdland, we did everything, and we did it strong. We would bop a loop, bop, shabap, bam, boom all night long and we made a pact, “Let's be entertainers together.” And we vow to one another, “We dance or we die.” [audience laughter]
Now, we both wanted to get out of Baltimore. I got out by being the first child to go to college. Iris could not get out of Baltimore, because she couldn't get from under the strong hand of our devout Christian mother. So, she married at the age of 16, and that gave her egress out of the house. We kept in touch as I traveled and I said, “Iris, anytime you want to call me, just drop a dime. “That's the late 1960s, early 1970s. [audience laughter] Or, “Call me collect and we'll talk.”
1975, I achieved my first national attention as the title character in the Wiz.
[applause]
More exciting than that, the Wiz did a three-city pre-Broadway tryout. And the first city it played was Baltimore, Maryland. So, the entire family came out. And Iris came with her two children, and we sat and we talked. We talked about the vow that we had made. And she said, “André, I'm so proud of you.” I said, “Thank you, Iris.” She said, “But my dream.” I said, “Don't even say it.” And then, we were on to Detroit and then Philadelphia and then New York. And then my phone rang and it was sister, Iris. And she said to me, “André, I hear voices.” I said, “So do I.” [audience laughter] I said, “What do your voices say to you?” She said, “They just called my name, Iris, Iris, Iris.” I said, “Do you ever answer?” She said, “No.” I said, “Why not?” She said, “I'm afraid,” “Iris, I'm going to come and visit you as soon as I get a chance.”
The chance came two years later, 1977. I visited Iris after she had been visited by the big C. The big C took her hair, the big C took her weight, the big C took her breasts, the big C took her cervix. And she said to me as I visited her in the hospital, “Why me?” I said, “Iris, don't go there. You have two children who love you. You have a husband who loves you as well as he can. And when you go to heaven, you can take your dreams with you. Remember what your name is. Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow. And what do we know about rainbows? That somewhere over the rainbow dreams do come true.”
[sings]
If you believe within your heart you'll know
That no one can change
The path that you must go
Believe what you feel
And know you're rights because
The time will come around
When you'll say it's yours
Believe there's a reason to be
Believe you can make time stand still
And know from the moment you try
If you believe, I know you will believe in yourself right from the start.
Believe in the magic inside your heart.
Believe all these things not because I told you to
But believe in yourself.
You must believe in yourself.
Please believe in yourself as I believe in you.
[cheers and applause]
Thank you.
Catherine: [00:17:00] In a career spanning more than half a century, André De Shields was the triple-crown winner of the 2019 awards season, garnering Tony, Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk Awards, as well as a Grammy for his universally praised role as Hermes, messenger to the gods in the musical Hadestown. He's an actor, director, philanthropist and educator, who had roles in the original Broadway productions of The Full Monty, Play on!, Ain't Misbehavin' and of course, The Wiz. André and I recently sat down to talk more about his family.
André: [00:17:36] My father, at the age 50, died, I was 17. However, that raises the stakes for me, thinking that I was going to run out of time in my own life to become the embodiment, the manifestation of the deferred dreams of both my parents that even to this moment continue to inspire me. Although, I do not believe that my parents are in heaven looking down upon me, I do know that they know that I have achieved because of them.
Catherine: [00:18:21] We talked about how André felt he was truly seeing Iris for the first time when she told him about hearing voices.
André: [00:18:28] And what I wanted Iris to understand was this. “The voice that you hear calling your name is another iteration of you, the you that wants to be free, the you that sees a different path, the you that sees a way to be your most authentic self.” If she would hold on to that seed of information, it would eventually make sense. It would eventually be enlightenment. But in 1977, she died.
Catherine: [00:19:09] That was André De Shields. He's currently starring in the revival of Death of a Salesman on Broadway.
Coming up, the writer Calvin Trillin and the mystery of a chicken who plays tic-tac-toe. That's when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
Jay: [00:19:40] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Catherine: [00:19:51] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. In this hour, we're talking about unseen forces in the world.
Next up, a story recorded at the New York Public Library's Celeste Bartos Forum, where we partnered with live from the NYPL. Here's Calvin Trillin, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Calvin: [00:20:14] l live in Greenwich Village, which I usually describe as a neighborhood where people from the suburbs come on Saturday night to test their car alarms. [audience laughter] Some years ago, I fell into the habit of taking out of town guests for a walk in Lower Manhattan, which started out at my house, go through the Italian South Village, through Soho, spend an awkward two or three blocks in the machine tool district, [audience laughter] then Little Italy, and then Chinatown, where after a dim sum lunch, the guest was permitted to play tic-tac-toe with a chicken. [audience laughter]
This was a real chicken in an amusement arcade on Mott Street, lived in a glass cage. The glass cage was outfitted with those backlit letters that you're familiar with, if you wasted your childhood playing pinball. On the cage were words like bird's turn, your turn. [audience laughter] And there were buttons you could push to put your x’s where you wanted them. When you did that, the chicken would go behind what was called the thinkin booth. [audience laughter] And Peck gets answers.
And if you beat the chicken, got a large bag of fortune cookies worth probably 35 cents or 40 cents. [audience laughter] And it only cost 50 cents to play. [audience laughter] But the chicken was very good at tic-tac-toe. [audience laughter] Everybody, I took down there looked over the situation and said the same thing. The chicken gets to go first. [audience laughter] And I would say, “But he's a chicken. [audience laughter] You're a human being. [audience laughter] Surely, there should be some advantage to that.” And then many of them, not all of them, but a distressingly high number of them would say, “The chicken plays every day. [audience laughter] I haven't played since I was a kid.”
They were wise to get their excuses in at the beginning of the game, because none of them ever beat the chicken. [audience laughter] Chicken was very good at tic-tac-toe. There were different explanations to explain why this was true. Some people thought a computer was involved. Some people thought it was a very intelligent chicken. [audience laughter] In my house, it was common to refer to somebody we'd met who seemed particularly clever by saying, “She's smart as a Chinatown chicken.” [audience laughter]
Even before I started taking people down there, the writer Roy Blount Jr. told me that from what he had heard once, the chicken had been trained by former graduate students of B.F. Skinner, [audience laughter] the legendary behavioral psychologist. I always hoped this was true, since it was a refutation of the false teaching that gradual work is of no value in the everyday world. [audience laughter]
It turns out that Roy had been accurately informed. A former graduate student of B.F. Skinner had gone with her husband to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and started training animals, including chickens who could play tic-tac-toe. In fact, it turned Hot Springs, Arkansas, into the small animal training capital of the world. [audience laughter] It also happens to be Bill Clinton's hometown. [audience laughter] As far as I know, those facts are unrelated. [audience laughter] But there is a cottage industry of animal training in Hot Springs.
I once interviewed a man who ran a place called Educated Animals, the former IQ Zoo. He had a Vietnamese pig who drove a Cadillac, [audience laughter] a parrot who roller skated and an act that consisted of a chicken dancing while a rabbit played the piano and a duck played the guitar. [audience laughter] I said, “What tune do they play?” [audience laughter] He said, “Their choice.” [audience laughter]
And then, the chicken died. I was, of course, heartbroken. I was cheered by the story about it in the New York Times, which was a beautiful story. Obviously, somebody who had played the chicken many times [audience laughter] had respect for an opponent even after being beaten by the chicken that many times. I've seen congressmen set off with less effusive obituaries. [audience laughter]
There were still people in Hot Springs, Arkansas, who trained chickens, but the chicken was not replaced. Another one of those electronic games came in its place. From what I heard, the animal people had put some pressure on the arcade not to have the chicken. And they can be quite persistent. I once wrote a column about something I had heard on CBC in Canada, that a hummingbird weighs as much as a quarter. That's an interesting fact.
What made me think was, does it weigh as much as two dimes and a nickel? [audience laughter] But my daughters were alarmed by how you'd go about weighing a hummingbird, because they always seemed to be in motion. And to set their minds at rest, I said, “We've all seen those nature documentaries where somebody shoots a stun dart into a wildebeest. And after putting some tracer on, it wakes up and it's good as new, you do the same thing with hummingbirds.” [audience laughter] The hard part isn't even hitting them with that little bitty dark. The hard part is slapping them on the cheeks to bring them around. [audience laughter] The animal people objected to that.
Once I happen to mention in a column that corgis are a breed of dog that appear to have been assembled from parts of other breeds of dogs, [audience laughter] and not the parts those dogs were all that sorry about losing. [audience laughter] You'd be surprised how many corgi owners there are. [audience laughter] Well, my hopes for the replacement of the chicken were dashed when it was obvious that the animal people were not going to give up. They said that a chicken playing tic-tac-toe, that was demeaning to a chicken. [audience laughter]
I wish they could have seen the film clip that I've seen of B.F. Skinner himself playing tic-tac-toe with the chicken. B.F. Skinner is smiling, but if you look closely, it's a nervous smile. [audience laughter] Being one of the giants of behavioral psychology, he knows how good that chicken is in tic-tac-toe. The chicken is looking supremely confident. He knows he is about to beat in tic-tac-toe, a distinguished professor of psychology from Harvard. Demeaning [audience laughter] that chicken is stinky with self-esteem. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:30:27] That was Calvin Trillin. He's a longtime staff writer at the New Yorker and also the Nation magazine's Deadline Poet. If you'd like to read more about the chicken, you can read Mr. Trillin's original New Yorker story, which goes into more detail about the famous fowl. You can find a link at our website, themoth.org.
Coming up, a murdered six-year-old begins appearing in his mother's dreams with messages. That's when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
[whimsical music]
Jay: [00:31:14] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Catherine: [00:31:26] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. Our final story is one that touches on a tough topic. It may not be right for all of our listeners. It's told by the luminous Francine Lobis Wheeler, whose son Ben was murdered during the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. It's not an easy story to hear, but Francine is one of the kindest, funniest and most honest people I've met in all my years at The Moth. And so, you're in the best of hands with this story. Live at St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn, here is Francine Lobis Wheeler.
[applause]
Francine Lobis Wheeler: [00:32:08] On December 25th, 2012, it was Christmas morning, about 11:00 in the morning. We just opened presents, and I turned to my husband, David, and I said, “I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't breathe.” And he said, “Honey, just try to relax. Go lay down. And I said, “No, I can't. I can't.” And I was like that, because 11 days before that, on December 14th, 2012, our son Ben was murdered in his first-grade classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School. So, that Christmas morning, I really couldn't do anything. But David, my husband, he convinced me to go lay down. So, I did.
I was so exhausted that I immediately fell asleep. As soon as I was asleep, I looked to the side of the bed and there was Ben. He didn't say anything. He just opened the palm of my hand, he kissed it, he closed the palm of my hand. I woke up, and I ran to David and I said, “Oh, my gosh, D. Ben came to me and he kissed my hand. And I know why. I know why.” And he said, “Why?” And I said, “Because of the book I used to read to him, The Kissing Hand where the mother raccoon, she kisses her son Chester's hand when he's scared to go to school. And she says, ‘Just know that my love for you is always there.’” And so, that's what Ben gave me that day.
So, then after that, I was asking him to come back. “Please come back. Show me another sign. Please come visit me. Please, please, please, I miss you so much.” And sure enough, a couple weeks later, he did. He came back in another dream. And in this dream, I was standing in the second floor of an elevator, and I went to the first floor, and then I went to the basement and the doors opened and there was Ben. And he said, “Mommy, you made it. I'm so glad.” We hugged and we kissed. And I said, “I love you.” And he said, “I love you,” and it was real. And he said, “But, Mama, I'm happy, but we're really worried about you. Don't let them trademark you.”
Now, when Ben was alive, he wanted to be smart, like his big brother, Nate. And he would often use these very long words to try [chuckles] and sound smart, but sometimes the words didn't always match the sentence. And so, in the dream, I said to him, “Are you sure you mean trademark?” And he said it again, “Don't let them trademark you, Mama.” And then, I woke up and I told everybody about the dream. “What do you think he meant by trademark? Do you think he meant Sandy Hook shooting? What was it? What did he mean? What did he mean?”
And in the meantime, that all this is going on, when you lose somebody that traumatically, that violently, that suddenly, you go back and you rethink things over and over and over again. I kept thinking about the last day of his life over and over and over again in my head. It was an interesting morning, because I was getting Nate and Ben ready for school, and I suddenly realized that Nate had book club and I said, “Oh, my gosh, guys, I forgot. We got to drop off Nate first. All right, get your stuff together. We got to move. We got to move.” I'm trying to clean up, and I'm stacking the dishwasher, and Benny comes over to me and he says, “Mama, what does forgiveness mean?” And I was like, “Oh, Ben, why are you asking me this right now? Come on, we got to go. We got to go.” And he said, “No, no, Mommy, what is forgiveness?” And I said, “I don't know, Ben. It's like when you do something wrong and the other person forgets about it. Now, come on, we got to go.”
So, I pack him up, we get in the car, we drop off Nate and I say to Ben, “Okay, Ben, you want to go back home and wait for the bus, or do you want to go to Starbucks for a treat?” And he said, “Starbucks.” So, we went to Starbucks, and he ordered a chocolate milk. I used to tell the story and said, hot chocolate, but then I found the receipt. It was chocolate milk. We sat down, and he said, “You know what, Mama? I'm going to be an architect when I grow up.” And I said, “Wow. Ben, that's amazing.” And he said, “No, wait, wait, wait. I'm going to be an architect and a paleontologist, because Nate's going to be a paleontologist, and I have to do everything Nate does.”
And I said, “Well, you know, you're your own person, Ben. You don't have to do whatever your brother does.” And he said, “Oh, no, no. I'm always going to be with Nate. I love Nate. And I love you, Mommy.” And I said, “I love you too. You know, it's so nice to just be here, just the two of us. We never get that chance to do that.” And then he said, “Mommy, can I have your iPhone?” [audience laughter] So, I gave him the iPhone. And a couple minutes later, I took him to school and a half hour later, he was dead. So, I kept reliving that over and over and over. Did it happen? Was it that special? Did we really say I love you to one another? What was that?
And in the meantime, that this is all happening, Newtown, where the school is, is just exploded like a bomb has gone off. And everybody is traumatized. There are grief counselors and trauma specialists flying in from all over the country trying to help us make some sense of any of it. And while this is all going on, we can't breathe. I still have to raise my other child. So, I take my son, Nate, to Lego camp one day in the middle of all of this craziness, and I walk in the door, and I see these women, and they're talking, and they look at me, and they stop talking. And then I keep walking and I could have sworn I heard one of them say “She lost her son at Sandy Hook.”
Another time, I went to the grocery store. I still had to get groceries, and I'm shopping, and I see this woman, she looks at me, she starts to cry, she goes in the other direction. Most of the time, the conversations in the grocery store, I'd run into somebody I knew and they'd say, “Hi, Fran. How are you? Oh, my God. I shouldn't have said that. Oh, I don't know what to say.” And I'd say, “I don't know what to say.” And then they'd say, “I think about you all the time. If there's anything you ever need, we should get the boys together.” And I'd say, “I like that. That would be great.” And they wouldn't call. And I thought, I just want people around me.
One time, I was running a 5K for my son Ben's charity. I'm doing the run, and I meet this other runner and he says, “Tell me about your son's charity.” And I said, “Well, it's in honor of my son, Ben, who died at Sandy Hook School.” And he said, “Oh, my God. Really?” And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Oh, I remember where I was that day on December 14th.” And I thought to myself, please don't tell me where you were that day. I don't want to know. But he did. He did. [audience laughter] And he said, “Oh, yeah, we were going to have a Christmas party for my company. We heard about all those kids and teachers getting shot. So, we cancelled the party. We gave all that money to Sandy Hook and I went home and hugged my kids. It was an awful day.” Yeah, I was so pissed at him. I couldn't understand why he would do that.
Another time, one day, I was out and this woman came up to me and she said, “I don't know if you know me, but I'm from Sandy Hook.” And I thought, oh, God, please don't tell me. Don't tell me how this makes you feel. I don't want to know. I really don't want to know. And she said, “I happened to be at Starbucks on the morning of December 14th.” And I said, “Oh.” And she said, “You know, I'm not really in the habit of eavesdropping, but I happened to notice what a beautiful conversation you were having with your son that day. And I thought maybe you'd want to know or I could tell you that.” I said, “Thank you.” I started to weep and weep. And she said, “Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to upset you.” And I said, “Oh, no. No, no, no. You have no idea what you did.”
“What is forgiveness, Mommy?” “It's when somebody does something wrong and the other person forgets about it.” I've had almost nine years without Ben. And in that time, I've often imagined what life would if he had survived the shooting. And I bet I would have said something stupid, or put my foot in my mouth or said too much or made it about me when I talked to a victim's family. And I get it, because we don't know how to grieve in this country. We don't know how to grieve in our culture. And I'm not mad at those people anymore. I forgive them. “Don't let them trademark you.” That's a little different.
My husband David and I do not have the luxury of not being trademarked by the Sandy Hook shooting, because our son Ben died that day. But nobody can trademark my kissing hand, my beautiful conversation at Starbucks or the six years, three months and two days that our son Ben lived. Nobody can trademark my love for him. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:44:25] Francine Lobis Wheeler is an actor, singer, songwriter, teacher, wife, and mother to three boys. She has performed in regional theaters and sung with swing bands and recording artists. Francine is the creative director of Ben's Lighthouse, a nonprofit promoting empathy and compassion for children. And she runs their summer camp based on her original programming, puppetry and music.
Currently, Francine and her creative team are in preproduction on her teleplay, Just Five Minutes, which will be filmed and streamed next year. With the music and book written by Francine, Just Five Minutes is her journey through grief, trauma and survival. I recently had a chance to sit down and talk with Francine.
How should people act around a grieving person whose personal loss is tied into national or international events? Like, were there things that people did that were helpful to you at the time?
Francine: [00:45:23] If they come up with ideas and if all the answers are no, that's okay. For example, if somebody were to come up to me and say, “Would you like an ear? Would you like a cup of coffee? Would you like me to come visit? Would you like to be left alone? Would you like me to bring you dinner? Would you tell me what is the best thing right now that you need?” and I will sit and listen. So, what often happened was let me know if you need anything, or I can't imagine what you're going through, and there's nothing I can say, so you tell me.
The problem with that answer is it requires the grieving to be active. Just to give you an example with Uvalde happened, I was in bed for a couple days. I didn't even realize that's what I was doing. But I had a friend that came in to my house, and brought me a meal and then left. Not that you have to cook for people. My point is that if you are an active listener and an active doer, even if that means you want to be left alone. Do you want to be left alone? Ask that brave question. What's the worst thing that can happen? The grieving person could yell at you, yes. Is it about you? Nope, it's about their loss. So, don't worry about it. Just try and be courageous.
Catherine: [00:47:03] Just offer.
Francine: [00:47:04] Offer. It's a great way to say it. Just offer.
Catherine: [00:47:07] I had totally forgotten that in some version of your story, we talked about you singing Joni Mitchell's Both Sides.
Francine: [00:47:14] That song is about joy and grief. It's about doing both at the same time.
Catherine: [00:47:19] In one of the drafts of your story, you wrote out, “But now, old friends are acting strange. They shake their heads, they say, I've changed. Well, something's lost and something's gained in living every day.”
Francine: [00:47:28] That makes me tear up, because there are people that were pissed. They were pissed, they wanted the old Fran, and that Fran died with Ben. How can I erase Ben's existence? Because that's what people are asking me to do. When they want me to be that Fran, they want me to be the one that goes, “Okay, you got to move on. You had a new child. We're all good now.” No, I'm sorry. That doesn't work like that.
Catherine: [00:48:00] Do you think there are limits to your forgiveness, or is it wide open?
Francine: [00:48:05] I told my story recently to middle schoolers, and I talked about forgiveness. And they immediately said, “Do you forgive the shooter and the shooter's mother?” And I say, “No. no, I don't need to. I don't need to. That's not part of my story. They're not part of my story.”
So, I forgive myself for sending Ben to school. I forgive others who don't know how to grieve or to honor the grief. I forgive them, because it doesn't help me to move forward. And so, the forgiveness is about acceptance and acknowledgement. But it doesn't mean I have to be friends, or be happy around those people or bring them into my world. It just means that I can accept their actions, and understand it and move on from that. And that's where my forgiveness comes from.
Catherine: [00:49:17] That was Francine Lobis Wheeler. To see photos of Francine and Ben, go to themoth.org.
That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:49:41] This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison and Catherine Burns, who also hosted and directed the stories. Coproducer Viki Merrick. Associate producer, Emily Couch.
The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski, Sarah Jane Johnson and Aldi Kaza. Special thanks to Ken Melamed, Molly Ringwald, Sue Liebman and the team at the Kerr Theatre. Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.
Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Chet Baker, O'Donel Levy and The Westerlies. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. And special thanks to the Ford Foundation's BUILD Women Leader Program for its support of The Moth Global Community Program.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.