The stories we choose to carry

Anyone who works with me can tell, my favourite part of my job is to get to know people and listen to their stories.

So it's always amazing to hear what patients are prepared to share. The dental treatment room suddenly becomes less clinical, more human and special.

So this week, one of my regulars came in and shared something that stayed with me. One of those, that I'll keep with me forever.

The sort of patient you look forward to seeing. Warm, thoughtful, curious about the world.

As we chatted, he mentioned that he and his wife would soon be travelling to Normandy, where he was particularly interested in visiting a new war memorial.

That simple comment opened a door.

Before long, he was telling me about his father, who had been stationed in Normandy in January 1945.

He spoke about growing up in London during and after the war. About the bomb damage. The shortages. The changes to daily life that seemed entirely normal at the time.

Then he paused,

almost surprised by his own memory.

He remembered some of his friends living in prefabricated houses after the war.

What struck him, all these years later, was not the destruction that had made those homes necessary.

It was the toilets.

Many of the older houses still had outside loos. To use them, families had to step out into the cold.

The prefabricated homes, however, had bathrooms indoors.

As children, he and his friends thought this was amazing.

Some of them were almost envious.

Imagine that for a moment.

Children looking at homes built because of wartime destruction and thinking, How lucky they are.

They weren't seeing loss.

They were seeing comfort.

They weren't thinking about what had been destroyed.

They were thinking about what had been gained.

And as he told the story, I found myself smiling.

Not because war is something to smile about.

But because of what his memory had chosen to preserve.

When we think about the Second World War, we think about devastation.

We think about the bombing.

The loss.

The separation of families.

The unimaginable suffering across Europe.

The winter of 1944 and 1945 was one of the darkest periods in modern history. Entire communities were displaced. Cities lay in ruins. Families waited for news that sometimes never came.

Yet sitting in front of me was a man whose memories seemed to have held onto something else.

The neighbours.

The rebuilding.

The small improvements in daily life.

The stories of his father helping Dutch families returning to devastated villages.

The humanity.

The warmth.

The hope.

I found myself wondering why.

How had his mind managed to preserve these moments?

Surely he knew the hardship that surrounded them.

Surely he understood, as an adult, the scale of what people had endured.

Yet somehow, what surfaced most readily were the stories of compassion.

The stories of people helping one another.

The stories of community and resilience.

I don't know whether this was acceptance.

I don't know whether time had softened the sharper edges.

I don't know whether his mind had simply chosen to preserve different things.

But what stayed with me was this:

when he remembered those years, what surfaced first wasn't destruction.

It was connection.

It made me think about something I see every day in dentistry.

Dentists and patients have something that connects them in that treatment room.

They both arrive carrying a story.

Patients may carry memories of a painful experience, a dismissive comment, an appointment that left them feeling frightened or ashamed.

And often, those experiences were very real.

The fear was real.

The pain was real.

The distress was real.

Dentists carry stories too.

The patient who trusted them.

The treatment that went well.

The difficult conversation they wish they had handled differently. The complaint that stayed with them longer than they expected.

None of us arrive as a blank page.

We bring our experiences with us, often without realising it.

Those experiences deserve to be acknowledged.

And perhaps, just like my patient reflecting on the years after the war, those stories are rarely a complete record of what happened.

They are the moments our minds have chosen to keep.

Sometimes that means carrying forward fear, embarrassment or disappointment.

Sometimes it means carrying forward trust, kindness and reassurance.

Often, it is a mixture of both.

But sometimes, without even realising it, we begin to carry those moments in a way that keeps them alive long after they have ended.

The memory stops being something that happened.

It becomes something we continue to live.

I wonder if suffering can become stuck.

Not because the original experience wasn't significant.

But because it becomes the only story we allow ourselves to tell.

I wonder if we take a moment to stop arguing with reality.

A moment to allow ourselves to say:

Yes, that happened.

Yes, it changed me.

And I no longer need to relive it in order to honour it.

There is something freeing about that idea.

Perhaps we have less control over what happens to us than we would like.

We may have more influence over which parts of those experiences we allow to shape the way we see the world.

I think what my patient's story was teaching me was that when we stop using all our energy holding onto the wound, we create space for something else.

Healing.

Growth.

Connection.

Meaning.

Almost eighty years later, he wasn't telling me a story about destruction.

He was telling me a story about rebuilding.

He wasn't talking about what had been lost.

He was talking about what had been found.

About indoor bathrooms, neighbours, and people helping one another.

The kindness.

The community.

The people who showed up when things were difficult.

The small moments of comfort that somehow became unforgettable.

The darkness hadn't disappeared.

But it wasn't the only thing his memory had chosen to keep.

Maybe that is true for all of us.

The goal is not to erase the painful chapters of our lives.

The goal is not to pretend they didn't happen.

The goal is to place them where they belong.

As part of our story.

Not the entirety of it.

I've been thinking about that ever since.