Thinking of you

Sometimes my mind will run on someone I did a story on years ago. I'll wonder how they're doing, if they're still coping with the loss of their loved one or celebrating another milestone. I'll wonder if they're alive.

Interviewing and writing an emotional story can be like crawling inside someone's head and heart, feeling his pain, grieving with him in order to write about it. It's draining for both the person and the storytelling conduit.

Often I walk away from intense encounters with a deep sense that we've somehow bonded. But once the story's done, contact is lost--a strange kind of absence after days and sometimes weeks of communication. But I never forget.

This is one of the first lessons they teach you: Objectivity. Don't get involved. But you form relationships, make friends, people matter, their lives matter. You cry.

On the odd occasion that I have reached out to someone long after the story's writing, just to check in, I've gotten surprised yet brief responses, and sometimes no response at all. I've come to accept the latter. After prodding someone's wound and telling the world about it, I'm a reminder of that pain. I stay away mostly.

Today I thought about a single mother who lost her teenage son in a car accident two years ago. And I thought about an 82-year-old volunteer who climbed more than 200 stairs at a lighthouse every day in 2004. Is she still hurting or has it dulled? Is he still climbing or has age finally caught up to him?

Wherever or however they are, I hope they know someone somewhere thought about them for a moment and wished them God speed.

"There are drawbacks that lend a poignancy to many encounters. Reporters are like cops in yet another way: We suddenly appear in someone's life at a crucial, often emotional point, suddenly their best friend, confessor, defendent, confidante, and shoulder-to-cry-on. We share the same foxhole for a short time, then we are gone with our story, slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am. It is often difficult for both of us. Sometimes I feel very close to the people I interview. They share their intimate secrets and pain, they tell me things they never told anyone--mostly because other people were too polite to ask.

"Often, particularly with the elderly or with the young and bereft, we become such pals that as I leave, they ask, "When are you coming back?" The answer, of course, is probably never. Tomorrow I will be thrust into some new close encounter with somebody else I may never see again.

"The problem is, I truly like some of these people and want to reach out to them. I would be their friend if circumstances were different and we had met some other way. But it is unprofessional to become involved with anyone you write about. And the daily whirlwind of news leaves little time for anything, much less the nurturing of new friends."

-- Edna Buchanan in "The Corpse Had A Familiar Face"

Photo courtesy Justin Yurkanin