“Why are we here?” Karen asked this nonchalantly, as if she were wondering why roosters have combs on their heads. I was hoping she was talking to herself—or that the question was rhetorical. But since we were driving to Houston, I was a captive audience.

She persisted. “Why are we here?”

“Well,” I said, “maybe we’re here because your father stole watermelons.”

Let me explain.

Karen’s father, Thom, was sixteen when he and a few friends decided to steal watermelons from a farmer’s field. When the farmer caught them, the boys sprinted for the car. Only Thom didn’t make it back to the front seat—his buddy got there first, and Thom was forced into the back. Moments later, the car crashed. Thom’s friend died. Thom lived. He grew up, married Ann, and together they raised five children.

I am, admittedly, an annoyingly hopeful person. As the writer George Saunders once said, “I like to find hope, sometimes irritatingly: ‘Oh, there’s a nail in my head. It’s great, I’ll hang a coat on it.’” Whatever my answer to Karen’s question, it has to be hopeful—or I’m out.

We are all, ultimately, storytellers. To live well is to mark our path with oral histories, written memories, and shared meaning. We are not meant to be alone. We do life together—loving, working, playing—and somewhere in that journey, we tell our stories. They don’t have to be dramatic. Mundane is fine, as long as it’s authentic.

We drove down Highway 19 through East Texas, passing through Paris, Athens, Emory (Thom Mason’s middle name), and Canton, where we stopped at the Dairy Palace for “the world’s best hamburger.” That’s what the sign says, anyway. Our destination was M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. We’ve been making this trip every four months for two years now. Lab work. Imaging. The doctor’s report. It’s like getting a report card—only your life depends on it.

So occasionally, our conversations drift toward the existential. Like this one.

How do we live, knowing we will die? The remains of our days buried or scattered to the four winds. Do people, like places, decay and vanish over time? Or do they linger—memories and emotions that never quite leave, like a rusted porch swing swaying in the breeze, slightly askew? Pompeii was buried alive, its people frozen mid-gesture, cups half-raised, the marketplace silenced mid-transaction.

This longing isn’t new. It’s as old as humanity itself. One of the oldest mythic stories ever recorded is The Epic of Gilgamesh. Before him stand shrubs of precious stones, vines heavy with carnelian and lapis lazuli. For thorns and thistles, there are pearls from the sea. Gilgamesh walks in the jeweled garden, beholding what endures when all else has turned to dust. The garden marks a threshold between the mortal and the divine—a glimpse of beauty and permanence mortals can see but never possess. It captures the ancient longing for transcendence, the awareness that even kings cannot escape death.

This scene embodies that timeless human tension: How do we live, knowing we will die?

Perhaps we live by telling stories.

My life has been framed by them. My mom sang to me this story—Jesus Loves Me. Grandma Taylor was a ceaseless storyteller. She prepared macaroni-and-cheese casserole, heavy on the butter and cheese, edges baked to a crisp. At precisely noon, she’d call us to the table. Grandpa would bow his head and say grace: “Our Most Holy and Merciful Father…” His amen was the other prayer bookend, and a green light for Grandma to tell her stories from a bottomless creative well.

My dad told stories. He once described something as “cold as a well-digger’s butt.” This shocked me coming from the mouth of a church elder—but it made my dad seem more real.

My first understanding of death was a story told by Grandma Davis. I was nine when my Grandpa Davis died. I listened in naive fascination as Grandma described his death to a friend, her voice trembling with emotion, love, loss, yet studied and dutiful reporting of his last breath, as I eavesdropped from the hallway.

There were Bible stories—Moses in the bulrushes, Noah’s ark, David and Goliath, Jesus. Then libraries and novels, and years later, reading stories to my children and grandchildren. Stories are, more than anything else, how I understand myself and my family.

Why are we here?

One Friday night in New Jersey, before Karen and I entered this world, three young men, bored and brimming with mischief, ran into a field of melons. Only two came home alive. One of them married and raised a family. From that family of seven came a thousand stories. The fourth child, Karen, married into another family of five children from Oklahoma, also a family with a thousand stories.

It would be easy to end with “They lived happily ever after.” But that wouldn’t be authentic, would it? The real stories go deeper—joy and grief, birth and death, meaning and memory.

We walk on in our own gardens, looking for a better one, telling stories as we go. And we walk hand in hand, beholding what endures when all else has turned to dust.

The question will not always be hidden behind a veil. Until then, we embrace a certain mystery. That is why we’re here. To tell the stories that keep us alive and give us hope.

What’s your story?