I had my first experience with senior living many years ago, as a young woman, very new to Chicago.

I had been teaching Sunday school for years at synagogues in my hometown, Pittsburgh. So when I arrived in my new city, I went immediately to Spertus College, where folks suggested placements for newcomers who wanted to continue teaching in their new environments. I said I was a high school teacher and preferred pre-Confirmation students and was assigned to a Reform congregation in the city’s farthest north suburb. I lived miles away and didn’t drive. So, to teach, I took a lengthy walk to the nearest bus station, a ride to the place where I boarded a northbound train, then another long walk to the assigned temple. I did this for a full school year, re-upping because the experience had been so non-fulfilling, I wanted to make sure it was the place and not I myself who was responsible.

Its rabbi kept comparing himself to Moses because, as he would say, “When I was a child, I was also a stutterer.” The school principal was a non-entity. But I made one lasting friend: As a folk music person, I lucked into Mike Bloomfield as my student. He hated religious school; all he wanted was an expensive new guitar; he had earned the money to purchase it by beating his father and friends at poker! I introduced him to two folk singers who took Mike shopping. Years later, when the first giant folk event took place in California and I was writing for a south suburban Chicago newspaper, I contacted the music critic of the city’s morning daily to get a report and learned that Mike had played that very same guitar during the festival!

Mike and I kept in touch after my November 1980 move to Dallas, but the following February, his obituary ran in that same daily paper. He had overdosed. His mother never forgave me; she thought he should have used his poker winnings to buy a dirt bike, popular among teens of rich families at that time, instead of his beloved guitar…

Why do I remember and write about this now? Because I also heard a story from a fellow teacher at that temple: A man had arrived in a senior retirement community wearing a hat. Everyone urged him to take it off, but he was resolute. However, he couldn’t keep fighting those folks forever, and they cheered when he finally removed his hat. But he lost a vital part of his identity with it…

The same teacher also told me that on Mother’s Day, a few women get visits from their children, but most just get a new purse. Lots of women there had lots of purses, but very little contact with their own families. I hope I haven’t moved into a community like that…

I am a believer. Things happen as they should. God has directed me here, also blessing — and cursing — me with a superior memory for tales like the above. So I’m now relocated as the storyteller I am, hoping that I’ll have the opportunity to tell my tales here — and to help others tell theirs — while I am alive. Because if we don’t tell our own stories, the death that follows will be more than physical; it will be forever. All that can live on after us will be our memories, told to those who follow us, to be retold by them when it’s their turn to do the telling. Please remember this: Eternal life exists only in our stories…

Harriet Gross can be reached at harrietgross1@gmail.com.