By Janet Singleton

“If you want to honor her, tell a story,” Keisha Washington told a Denver Post reporter about her aunt, storyteller Opalanga Pugh. For a quarter of a century, as a traditional Griot, she built her life on stories. Written about in publications like the Wall Street Journal and Christian Science Monitor and dubbed a “living legend” by an NBC show, Pugh was among only about 300 people in America who make their livings as fulltime storytellers, according the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, Tennessee.

Opalanga Pugh

Here is a story that Pugh might have liked: A man struggles to escape a jetliner after a fiery crash. As he makes his way through the scorched emergency exit, he can see that some of his fellow passengers have not survived. He notices their spirits leaving their bodies. Some souls are dull and faded. Others shine brightly. After escaping, the man decides that the incandescent souls represented brightly lived lives and that he is going to live life so that when he dies his soul will sparkle.

Pugh’s sparkling life ended Saturday. She was 57.

As cancer drew her own narrative to a close, her Denver community came together to make sure that the way she met death mirrored the way lived life. Up to 45 volunteers were involved in everything from hands-on care to housecleaning, said friend Wyndi Talley. “They came from all the community groups Opalanga had been involved in.”

“This illness has taught me patience and humility,” Pugh said in the weeks before her death. “When you need help to pull your pants up or down that makes you more humble. I didn’t realize,” joked the storyteller, who stood at over six feet and whose name meant tall and thin in Yoruba, “that it was such a long way down there.

“I had thought of myself as an independent woman.” she said. Pugh had no medical insurance, however. So she was grateful for support that in her last months expanded to a fleet of helpers who worked four-to six-hour shifts day and night.

Though the plane crash account is based on the recollection of an actual survivor, Pugh’s fables were steeped in cultural symbolism. In the past she had been the one rendering a service. Dressed in African garb, projecting a voice of wisdom, and often tapping a drum, Pugh informed and dazzled audiences in venues worldwide, from corporate auditoriums to women’s conferences, to the wood-paneled floors of elementary schools. Her stories were parables of peace such as the Cherokee tale she related about a chief who told his grandson that the human heart contains a raging war between two wolves. One wolf stands for goodness and generosity, and the other, hatred and evil.

“Which one will win?” the boy asks.

“The one you feed,” the elder answers.

Those who know Pugh have no doubt which proverbial wolf was well-fed in the storyteller’s heart. “She was there for the sick, the seniors, and young people,” says friend Laticia Williams in a YouTube biography about Pugh. A presence at memorials, weddings, and celebrations in Denver’s black community, she was a mistress of ceremonies counted on to insert a sense of heritage and unity.

Though Pugh’s Colorado roots dated to 1902, when her grandfather came to Denver for railroad work, she studied the art of being a Griot while living in Nigeria and Gambia. She mined her African heritage for her stories and for her lifestyle. Pugh welcomed strangers as brothers and sisters. She expressed a “village” philosophy that promoted inclusivity, mind mastery, and conservation that made her as futuristic as she was traditional.

In 2000 when she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, little changed. Four years later, when the test numbers indicated the disease was advancing, a fundraiser helped pay Pugh’s early medical expenses.

Christmastime, 2009, Denver Country Jail inmates comprised the audience for her last performance. Then the disease, which had spread to her bones, began to shadow her tightly and after a fall, she required continual care.

Still her wry sense of humor persisted undiminished. “Life is living me, girl,” she said.

When asked which of her stories best echoed her own experience in the world, she told this one: “A man is walking down the road with his friend. They are going the same way, and they have become traveling companions. They are called Master and Stranger. When they approach a village Master looks for a place to spend the night. A woman beckons from a house and says, ‘It is warm in here.’ They join the family for dinner and spend the night. In the middle of the night Master wakes Stranger. ‘Get up quickly. It is time to go!’ he says. As they left, the woman stood on the porch screaming, ‘My baby is dead!’ Stranger didn’t know what to do, so he walked on with Master.

“They walked days through the woods and streams. Then they came to a family that was poor. The man of the house said, ‘You are welcome here. We are poor but we have heat. Sleep in front of the fireplace.’ In the middle of the night Master shook Stranger and said ‘Time to go.’

“Stranger got up and they continued to walk. One morning they came to a high African peak and saw a chief taking his morning bath in a lake. Master pushed the chief in the water until he drowned.” Stranger had had enough. ‘How could you do such a thing?’

“’You look with your eyes but you don’t see what is happening. The first house had a child with a terminal illness, and he would have tapped out all of the family’s resources before he died. The second house was poor but had a great treasure underneath it, but they would not have known if I had not revealed it. And the chief, he lacked compassion and needed to be reborn.”

For Pugh, the tale symbolized life’s inexplicable “necessary losses” and Master represented God. The tale, she said, helped her see illness not as a punishment but as part of a sacred journey. “But we don’t always get to guide the ship.”

Pugh had no spouse or children. She was “married to the community,” she said. Apparently the commitment was mutual. And even the non-spiritual might wonder if, at the critical moment, someone at her bedside looked up and saw something shimmer.

Janet Singleton is an award-winning novelist and journalist.