This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX, and I'm Katherine Burns.

I've worked at the Moth for more than 20 years, and one of my favorite parts of my job

is all the people I get to meet.

The storytellers, of course, but also their friends and family.

There are so many people who had never get to meet in real life, but who I've had the privilege

of getting to know a little bit when their loved one tells a story about them.

This is especially true when a storyteller is talking about someone who has died.

Through our stories, we're able to keep the people we love alive long after they leave

us.

I think of comedian Mike Dastofano's wife, Franny.

Two weeks later, they sent her out of the hospice because she started to get better.

She was thrown at a hospice for not dying.

And all these she could pull that off.

She was a young Italian girl, and she was not interested in suffering and dying.

Like who is, but she was extra not fucking into it.

Or Kate Teller's memory of her late mother, Lisa.

We're laughing about this, and she throws her head back like she does.

I note the shape of her nose, and that her head is so small, she buys her glasses.

And she goes in the children's section, at Lenscrafters.

And I can see this because in the candlelight I can see the side, the arm of the glasses,

where it says Harry Potter.

To tell a story about someone who has died is to conjure them back to life, if only for

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