When writing your best friend's eulogy, it's only natural that you'd look to the past.  That's exactly what successful author Thomas Weaver does in the recent Broadway musical, THE STORY OF MY LIFE.  But in his quest to find the perfect story to tell about his best friend Alvin, Thomas ends up reliving the stories that constitute their friendship, becoming paralyzed.  It's not until Thomas changes how he thinks of stories that he can give Alvin the tribute he deserves.

At the end of the show, Thomas is able to give Alvin's eulogy when he stops looking for it in their past.  Thomas' childhood is highly familiar terrain.  As Alvin tells him repeatedly, Thomas has "thousands of stories in this head...just waiting [for him] to pick one and write it down."  The true source of these stories, however, is his friendship with Alvin.  "I live in a small town and sell books," Alvin points out, "and you spun that into a career."  With so much of Alvin's life already published, Thomas becomes obsessed with the story behind Alvin's Christmas Eve suicide.  All those stories about their friendship become "just fact" as Thomas is convinced the real story is "the crisis that went undetected...the instant it splintered and cracked."  For Thomas, Alvin's eulogy isn't just about honoring his friend; it's also about Thomas' taking responsibility for any part he might have had in his friend's suicide:

"Did I do the nudging
When his life careened?
Now how do I bounce through a lifetime
To poinpoint when I should have intervened?

Where is that story?
What should I say?
I've gotta do this right, Alvin.
I've gotta find the piece of the puzzle
That brought me here today."

Thomas is unable to find the perfect story, because the one he's looking for-the story of Alvin's death-doesn't exist in the past. "That's the one you're looking for, right?" Thomas imagines Alvin saying.

"But you can't remember something if you weren't there. But you weren't there.  So, all you're ever going to have are questions...I could keep going, but they all have the same answer.  There's gotta be thousands of stories in this head of yours, Tom.  Don't look for one that isn't there."

By continuing to live in the past, Thomas prevents himself from finding the story that sums up Alvin's life.



Thomas is also able to move on when he realizes that stories don't have to be frozen.  Even as a child, Thomas loves how writing something down preserves it for people to read years later. The idea of longevity is what made him start writing in the first place, after reading a copy of Tom Sawyer:

"I guess I used to think
That books were only words on paper
But when I'm reading this
It's like Tom Sawyer's really here.

When things are written down
They don't just disappear like vapor.
They travel through time
Beyond that one specific year.
And I think writing stuff like that
Would make a neat career."

Ideas that aren't written down, Thomas believes, "are just visitors, ephemeral, and rare."  He can't even think of people lasting after their deaths unless he compares them to chapters in a book God is writing; he plans to read a John Donne quotation making that very metaphor as Alvin's father's eulogy.  But when Alvin gives his father's eulogy instead, Thomas begins to question his view of stories.  Thomas agonized over what story to tell so much that he turned to someone else's words, but Alvin is able to tell story after story without any planning at all.  Stories, Thomas realizes, aren't frozen in stone-they're more like the snow angels he and Alvin would make each year.  "And every year," Thomas remembers, "we'd watch them disappear...

But I know that they'll return
And though the years may come and go
When I need to have them with me they'll be here."

If stories aren't things you dig out of your past-if they're simply all around you, waiting for when you need them-then maybe you don't need to write them down to make them real.  In understanding this concept, Thomas also understands what Alvin has spent his life trying to teach him: how to look up from his page.

THE STORY OF MY LIFE  ends with Thomas closing his notebook.  "Let me tell you a story about Alvin," he begins.  We don't know what stories Thomas has finally decided to tell.  That doesn't matter.  All that matters is that one simple gesture as Thomas, letting go of his past, prepares to tell-not write-the story of Alvin's life.



To license THE STORY OF MY LIFE, visit our MTI show page. For more information on THE STORY MY LIFE, check out the show's official website. Discuss this article and share your thoughts on THE STORY OF MY LIFE on THE STORY OF MY LIFE's ShowSpace page.