When Writing Moves: A Story of Love
Once in a blue (or harvest) moon, the Internet shares a story of real substance. This is no small event given the sheer volume of information and commentary served up by media feeds on the average day. That one story can slice through the noise and strike a chord in people’s hearts is a testament to the refined quality of both the story itself and the writing that conveyed it. It’s worth observing the moving nature of a story like that, for what it reinforces about the power of loving expression in our times.
This story came to me this week via Twitter - admittedly not my favourite source as of late. I generally find Twitter to be full of fear and ire, so I took the step recently to unfollow news outlets and follow writers instead. As algorithms would have it, trending to the side of my feed, as a Twitter ‘event’, was an article by Los Angeles Times business reporter Daniel Miller: ‘How a brother’s obituary for his ‘Special Sister’ became a poignant internet phenomenon’. I clicked on it to discover two tweets from Miller himself - the first one from several days ago sharing an obituary he and his wife had read in the paper:
The short piece, written by a 64-year-old cabinetmaker in California, Erik Sydow, is a deeply moving tribute to his sister, Karen, who died early in September at the age of 61. She had cerebral palsy, and Sydow’s obituary tells of the few words Karen spoke in her life of the things she loved - ‘Mom’; ‘Donalds’, for McDonalds, her favourite restaurant; and ‘piano’, because she loved music. It’s the story of a family now mostly passed, but one strongly loving in memory. It tells of Karen’s laughter and tears, and of her brother’s devotion, simply stated as ‘I needed you too.’ It’s a story of pure love, and it’s stunning in its sincerity.
The second tweet by Daniel Miller shares a second part to this ‘event’, as the article Miller wrote after contacting Sydow directly. Well over 200 thousand people from all over the world have liked Miller’s tweet, with many of them compelled to share their sympathy for the loss of Sydow’s loved ones, and their understanding of his challenges and grief. Miller writes about some of these responses in his article.
Miller’s article is - to use an expression from my youth - all class. It honours the refinement of Sydow’s obituary by describing it concisely: ‘Its brevity belied its weight. The grief was palpable. So was the love.’ Miller tells the story of how he found and shared the obituary, but focuses his piece on Sydow’s memories of his parents and of Karen, ending on a heartfelt recounting of the one time Karen used two different words to her brother: ‘I love’. Miller’s own writing conveys a profound empathy for the Sydow family; it is concentrated and unadorned - one of the best pieces of writing I’ve read in years.
It would undermine the honesty and humanity of Sydow and Miller in this story to overanalyse why their writing is so poignant - but the theme of fewer, deeply-felt words links them to each other and to Karen, whose own few spoken words are the heart of this story of love. Out of respect for them all, I won’t wax on.
In discussions of style, there is no substitute for actual substance. What is real and true speaks for itself and has the capacity to move others - in a few sincere and loving words.
LvNL / Shutterstock.com