Happy Valentine’s Day, folks. Schmaltziness and corporate-mandated consumerism aside, the day is really about love. What better way to express it, revel in it, and share it, than by listening to stories of love.
StoryCorps, the national storytelling and social history project, is built around doing exactly that. StoryCorps founder David Isay dropped by Democracy Now! today to share some of the best stories the project has collected.
Stories are edited down from a forty-minute interview between a pair of people. "If you had only forty minutes left to live, what would you say to a loved one?" is how many participants come to see these sessions. Truths come out, untold stories surface, people profess their love over and over.
This Democracy Now! segment included funny, frank stories between an elderly but passionately loving couple looking back on memories of decades of marriage, a mother who comes to know the boy who murdered her son, and the story of David Wilson, a black man who meets his partner at a grief counseling session. Wilson and his husband become plaintiffs in the 2004 case legalizing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, and along the way, Wilson’s father struggles to come to terms with his son’s public role.
Listen to the story, of Wilson finding new love and being able to share his joy with his father, and we dare you not to cry. (If you keep a handkerchief handy, now’s a good time to pull it out of your pocket.)
We celebrate love every day around here but on this day, we want to wish you an especially happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at Colorlines.com.
We’re ending the day as often as possible by celebrating love. We welcome your ideas for posts. Send suggestions to [email protected], and be sure to put Celebrate Love in the subject line. You can send links to videos, graphics, photos, quotes, whatever. Or just chime in to the comments below and we’ll find you. Be sure to let us know you’ve got the rights to share any media you send.
To see other Love posts visit our Celebrate Love page.