A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 23

This is the 11th year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Why a story idea each day for the month? Because the best way to come up with a great story idea is to come up with a lot of ideas. And the best way to come up with a lot of ideas is to be proactive in sourcing story ideas.

Today’s story: His family stayed on the phone for 30 hours — until he died.

Like so many people who have lost loved ones to Covid-19, Abby Adair Reinhard wasn’t able to be at the hospital with her dying father, Don Adair.

A nurse offered to put the hospital telephone next to Adair’s ear, and Adair Reinhard and her three siblings were able to talk to their father — for more than 30 hours, until he died, she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

“It was a huge blessing,” Adair Reinhard said. “It allowed me to have some sort of closure. … I was able to say what I needed to say, knowing it was the end, and even though I couldn’t see him and I couldn’t hold his hand, having that connection over the phone was incredibly valuable.”

The siblings, joined by phone from Denmark to Texas and North Carolina to upstate New York, shared memories, sang songs to their dad, and expressed their love for him, Adair Reinhard said.

Adair, 76, “couldn’t really talk, you know, but we could hear him breathe. And so we just had time together,” Adair Reinhard said.

They would at times doze off, then one would say, “We love you, Dad, we’re here for you, Dad,” Reinhard said.

First off, my condolences to the Reinhard family and all families who have suffered a loss due to the Covid-19 virus. The very idea that one would be prohibited due to safety concerns from being at the side of a dying family member is an horrific one.

That said, one of the reasons why Story is such an essential part of what it means to be a human is because it provides a safe context in which to experience such horrors. You can turn off the TV, walk out of a movie theater, close a book, change the radio station. Stories enable us to safely experience the most fearful events and feel our feelings.

When reading this story about the Reinhard family, I was reminded of the book Into Thin Air about a disastrous attempted scaling of Mount Everest, resulting in four deaths including one of the guides Rob Hall. Here is a Wikipedia description of his last few hours:

On 11 May, at 4:43 am, close to twelve hours after the blizzard had started, Hall radioed down and said that he was on the South Summit. He reported that Harris had reached the two men, but that Hansen had died sometime during the night and that Harris was missing as well. Hall was not breathing bottled oxygen, because his regulator was too choked with ice. By 9:00 am, Hall had fixed his oxygen mask, but indicated that his frostbitten hands and feet were making it difficult to traverse the fixed ropes. Later in the afternoon, he radioed to Base Camp, asking them to call his wife, Jan Arnold, on the satellite phone. During this last communication, he reassured her that he was reasonably comfortable and told her, “Sleep well my sweetheart. Please don’t worry too much.” He died shortly thereafter.

Taking that narrative conceit — characters on a phone call over an extended period of time in which one of them is dying — and staying away from the tone of a movie like Phone Booth, let’s go with a straight-ahead drama.

Aviva, 29, is at home with her three year-old daughter Lana on a typical Saturday. Lots of playtime spent on the floor, Aviva relishing this alone mommy time because during the week, it’s 60 hours at work at her busy corporate job. Aviva is excited because her husband Owen is due home after a ten-day business trip. His last meeting was with a wealthy client who lives in Telluride, Colorado. Aviva noted a snowstorm headed that way, but Owen assured her that although it had just started snowing, the roads were clear. The drive to Grand Junction where he had a flight which connected to Chicago then home to Philadelphia would get him home in time to spend a few minutes with Lana before bedtime.

Then the phone call. It’s Owen. His voice is choppy, his words disconnected. It takes a few minutes for Aviva to realize that Owen’s car had careened off a winding two-lane road, slipping on black ice, then hurtling down two hundred, landing upside down in an icy river. Miraculously, Owen had survived, although bones are broken and he has a severe head trauma.

Calls to 911. They can’t lock in on Owen’s phone signal. Too weak. His line keeps dropping in and out. Aviva has no idea where exactly Owen lost control of the car. It could be anywhere in a 42 mile stretch of road. Visibility diminishing as the snowstorm kicks in.

Owen is suffering blood loss, but more significant, the icy water is seeping into the car through cracked windows and his body temperature is slowly dropping.

I imagine this as a real time story, the last 90 minutes of Owen’s life. There is some action as Aviva switches calls to the 911 dispatch in Colorado, but mostly it’s about a couple saying goodbye.

What would you talk about? How would you comfort the dying person? How would you control your emotions to be a source of support? What memories would you share? Regrets. Forgiveness. Expressions of love.

There’s a really big storytelling choice: Do we stay with Aviva and only hear from Owen? Or cut back and forth? My instinct is the former to explore this young woman’s sense of loss as it slowly, but inevitably envelopes her.

There you go, my 22nd story idea of the month. What would YOU do with it?

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22

Each day in April, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in RESPONSES to hear YOUR take on this story idea. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.