Lynel Gardner

 “Stories I Never Told My Father”

By Mikaya Strickling

You know we all have pain and we all have our own way of dealing with it. Some of us let our pain fester, hoping it will go away by itself only to see it grow into something that we feel is beyond our control. Others ignore the pain and never deal with it, then turn off every feeling of every emotion they ever had to keep from getting hurt. 

Lynel Gardner’s way was to create a one-man performance called “Stories I Never Told My Father.” Through the show he tries to come to terms with a rough and painful childhood in San Francisco and East Palo Alto. He tells the story of his relationship with his father who was a drug dealer, a pimp, a heroin user and an abuser of women. 

The show begins as the young actor appears standing erect in dim blue light at the center of an empty stage. His opening words are,  “On January 27, 1991, my father was released from San Quentin Prison. I hadn’t seen him in 12 years. All of the sudden I was someone’s son again.”

While his father was in prison, Lynel was growing up and missing the love from a father he so badly needed. But even when his father had been there, what Lynel needed was absent, as he lived through scene after nightmarish scene that his father’s activities brought him into, such as being left on a street corner holding balloons of heroin as his father fled the police.

What becomes of someone absent of the love and caring he always wanted but never received?

I thought that someone like Lynel, who had lived through mistreatment and abandonment, would become heartless or lost to the streets. The abuse and violence detailed in the play would seem almost irreversible ... but I am glad to say I was wrong.

Lynel Gardner had been through that only to come out a victor. He came out of it with more love, more sensitivity, more hope, more of God in him. He knows the true meaning of not only forgiveness but the meaning of facing your fears in order to be free of them.

As part of educating others about the struggles of young black men without positive role models, Lynel has been performing “Stories I Never Told My Father” and has even made a DVD of it. Parts of my own childhood are also broken, and I understand through Lynel how precious the love of a father is growing up.

At the play’s end, Lynel tells the audience, “These are the stories I never had the chance to tell my father, so I’m telling them to you. Your listening to me has helped to heal me. And what I've realized in my life is that the bond between father and son is something that can never be broken. You can wait for it your whole life."

Through telling his story, Lynel has become not hard-hearted but openhearted. To save the youth of today he has taken a large step into embracing humanity through forgiveness and an acceptance of himself. He is healing not only himself but others. Lynel Gardner is a courageous and loving individual and I will remember his story if and when pain comes knocking again.