Forgotten but not entirely lost.

 

 

http://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/james-e-mckinney_118417401

I am thinking of a theme to energize this writing challenge, and I remember the last piece of fiction I wrote in the previous winter. What started rather innocently as a way to use a given prompt became a short story about abandoned town in Alaska. I have never been there, and the only images I had seen were from postcards and several websites.  And yet there was something in the story of that town that touched me in a way that was surprising. The moment when life is shattered and people left without a stable hold on their life I find fascinating and tantalizing at the same time.

Over time the story has a way of amalgamating around few chosen (by whom?) details. Those are repeated in front of different audiences to the point that they acquire a quality of a two-dimensional poster, and many details and fragments of people lives are lost.

Why do I care?

Because somewhere, in these stories, is my family’s lost tale.

This tale, that I managed only recently to pull out of almost total forgetfulness and yet so many parts will never be back. I cannot breathe life into the two-dimensional details; I cannot find the people behind the names,   behind the cold facts.

 To revive amalgamated stories is to tear them apart, tag at the loose ends, look for discrepancies, and search for what is missing rather than what there is. At times, the only way to revive a dead story is by using fiction.