Song for Autumn
"In the deep fall/don't you imagine the leaves think how/comfortable it will be to touch the earth instead of the/nothingness of air and the endless/freshets of wind?"
Mary Oliver writes in "Song for Autumn."
What does it mean to live a good life, to have a good death? A mentor of mine died a good death recently, loved deeply by so many who visited regularly until the very end. I never went to see him, even though S asked many times that we do so. I had heard from a mutual friend that he'd said, "Let them come if they need to say goodbye," and I didn't. I didn't because the last time I saw him, he had hugged me tightly and told me how glad he was to have worked with me, and I had said the same. We both knew, of course, that he was dying, but in that moment, surrounded by the noise and laughter at a community meal, we didn't have to say it.
Before then, S and I had presented him with a painting of his favorite local hang out at his retirement party, and a note in which I'd told him how very much I admired him. I admired him because he was genuine, always. There was never a doubt about how he felt about any new idea, any new challenge in his work--he would tell you, directly, but also gently. There was also never a doubt that he valued people over policies or financial realities or public relations. He was an innovator--he wanted to help people find and live their dreams. And then, when that happened, he would just sort of sit back and smile, but never take the credit. Case in point: I showed up in his office and told him I dreamed of someday taking students from the college where I teach to the island my family is from--an island in the middle of nowhere, far away from the Acropolis and the Plaka, without much of a written history at all. I wanted them to go and just be with the elders there, to find a way to connect and learn from them. It was a vague plan, at best. Within a year, it happened. To say that his belief in the idea was absolutely critical would be an understatement. He would find a way to "play with the numbers" until the trip was affordable for as many students as possible.
Perhaps I am a coward for not going to see him in those last days, but I knew that others he knew better than me were visiting regularly, and that he had excellent care, and that he knew how I felt about him.
I can't help but contrast his death--and the death of my father, who was lovingly cared for by my sister in his last days as we tried to get home from Greece--and the death of my other mentor, Gremmels, who was with his wife and family when he passed--to the death of the student I lost recently, the one I wrote about in my last blog. I wanted to imagine that his death had been peaceful, but I've since learned it was not--and this truth, which I can't explain further here, has been devastating.
I think in a very real way I tend to think of life as a struggle--if people were leaves, they would be fighting the wind, clinging to the branch, not wanting to go to the next phase, the obviously worse phase. We are all hanging on, in my worldview, to our ideals, to our dreams, and if we give in to whatever is pushing us around, we're going to be lost forever.
My work with people with Alzheimer's, which started when I was in graduate school, and the more than ten years of thinking and writing I've done about this, has changed this worldview to some extent. At least, I liked to think it had. I write about how my friends with Alzheimer's have taught me to live in the moment, each moment, how to understand my life not as a coherent narrative--this happened, then this, then this--but rather as a curious and raucous circle of characters and memories and dreams and jokes and stories. We can dance in that circle, breathe in it. We can create ourselves again day in and day out. We can learn, most importantly, about deep connection, about how to enter into another person's world instead of trying to pull them into ours.
But how well have I applied this concept to my work with students? Not very well. I pride myself in being able to help a a student who started out barely able to write a sentence to the point where he is walking across a stage. I like to see the way service-learning projects change students' views or help them to find a passion for social justice. I am outcome-oriented. I always have been.
Speaking of circles, haven't I written about this before? Maybe it's all I ever write about--this tension between wanting to create change and wanting to take my time being fully present with other people, understanding how they see the world, finding a way to create a space for real connection. But, what is connection if it is not connected in some real way to social change? What is a story if it is not part of the larger story of how we grow to understand each other, to peel away the layers of oppression and privilege until we live in a just world?
It would be impossible to write about death without also writing about the many kids who have killed themselves in that past few months--the numbers I've seen have ranged from six to 14, and I'm not sure anymore what accounts for the differences. I know, of course, that suicide is never as simple as, "I was gay, people didn't accept me, I killed myself." I also feel a bit of discomfort about politicizing deaths like these. At the same time, what could possibly be more political than how we die, besides how we live? Do we live in a society where we are hated, tolerated, or truly integrated and honored for the gifts we have to give? Do we live in a society where we are lovingly cared for at the end of life, where we don't choose our own deaths, but we are willing, like the leaves in Oliver's poems, to lie down--even longing for such rest? Can we ever see death through lenses that do not evoke some kind of longing for something that can't be won't be--can we ever stop saying, "What if so-and-so had only lived a little longer?"
Oliver goes on, "And don't you think/the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,/warm caves, begin to think//of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep/inside their bodies? And don't you hear/the goldenrod whispering goodbye,/the everlasting being crowned with the first/tuffets of snow?"
The answer to these rhetorical questions is, only if you are listening. I write this not to evoke notes forgiving me, or assuring me that I couldn't have prevented anyone's decision to die--but I do know that I have not always listened. Sometimes this has been because the person across from me isn't communicating in a way I can understand. Maybe I think it's pretentious or overly self-pitying or overly theoretical. Maybe I don't want to bother to go further--or I've tried, and he hasn't wanted to go there. Whatever the situation, it is easier to close doors, to turn away. Easier to think, "I don't want this"--this friendship, this student-teacher relationship, whatever--"to be this hard." There is a restlessness to many interactions in this time of economic challenge, when everyone is trying to do more with fewer resources, less time. And yet, the seasons go on changing. Our surroundings, even with their subtle changes, remain familiar.
"The pond/vanishes, and the white field over which/the fox runs so quickly brings out/its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its/bellows. And at evening especially,/the piled firewood shifts a little,/longing to be on its way."
Perhaps we all long for the fire. We want to be made new, to be born again. We don't want to die, most of us, but we all need rest, an through that rest, we have the potential to transition into a new, better version of ourselves. Even then, we dance in the same circle of characters, regardless of how or when or whether we tried to make an escape.
What I know from my student's memorial is that I was not the only person who misunderstood him--but also, I've learned that many, many people did not. Many people saw his brilliance, understood that he couldn't learn or be in relationship in the conventional ways. He connected to some of us on very deep levels. The rest of us can remember comical misunderstandings, or moments when we got close to knowing him, or allowing him to know us.
His death has made me want even more to start Healing Ranch, and to think more clearly and deeply about its mission. Maybe the ranch should not be focused on transitions in the traditional sense of the term--on setting goals, on trying to discover one's gifts and applying them--but rather on the journey from tree to ground, on finding a way out of the wind, a way to rest and evaporate and come back in some new form. And then, once we have found our way to the fire, we can look at the world, and not where we want to fit into it, but how we can change it so that anyone, everyone, could draw their circles in the sand, and dance.
Mary Oliver writes in "Song for Autumn."
What does it mean to live a good life, to have a good death? A mentor of mine died a good death recently, loved deeply by so many who visited regularly until the very end. I never went to see him, even though S asked many times that we do so. I had heard from a mutual friend that he'd said, "Let them come if they need to say goodbye," and I didn't. I didn't because the last time I saw him, he had hugged me tightly and told me how glad he was to have worked with me, and I had said the same. We both knew, of course, that he was dying, but in that moment, surrounded by the noise and laughter at a community meal, we didn't have to say it.
Before then, S and I had presented him with a painting of his favorite local hang out at his retirement party, and a note in which I'd told him how very much I admired him. I admired him because he was genuine, always. There was never a doubt about how he felt about any new idea, any new challenge in his work--he would tell you, directly, but also gently. There was also never a doubt that he valued people over policies or financial realities or public relations. He was an innovator--he wanted to help people find and live their dreams. And then, when that happened, he would just sort of sit back and smile, but never take the credit. Case in point: I showed up in his office and told him I dreamed of someday taking students from the college where I teach to the island my family is from--an island in the middle of nowhere, far away from the Acropolis and the Plaka, without much of a written history at all. I wanted them to go and just be with the elders there, to find a way to connect and learn from them. It was a vague plan, at best. Within a year, it happened. To say that his belief in the idea was absolutely critical would be an understatement. He would find a way to "play with the numbers" until the trip was affordable for as many students as possible.
Perhaps I am a coward for not going to see him in those last days, but I knew that others he knew better than me were visiting regularly, and that he had excellent care, and that he knew how I felt about him.
I can't help but contrast his death--and the death of my father, who was lovingly cared for by my sister in his last days as we tried to get home from Greece--and the death of my other mentor, Gremmels, who was with his wife and family when he passed--to the death of the student I lost recently, the one I wrote about in my last blog. I wanted to imagine that his death had been peaceful, but I've since learned it was not--and this truth, which I can't explain further here, has been devastating.
I think in a very real way I tend to think of life as a struggle--if people were leaves, they would be fighting the wind, clinging to the branch, not wanting to go to the next phase, the obviously worse phase. We are all hanging on, in my worldview, to our ideals, to our dreams, and if we give in to whatever is pushing us around, we're going to be lost forever.
My work with people with Alzheimer's, which started when I was in graduate school, and the more than ten years of thinking and writing I've done about this, has changed this worldview to some extent. At least, I liked to think it had. I write about how my friends with Alzheimer's have taught me to live in the moment, each moment, how to understand my life not as a coherent narrative--this happened, then this, then this--but rather as a curious and raucous circle of characters and memories and dreams and jokes and stories. We can dance in that circle, breathe in it. We can create ourselves again day in and day out. We can learn, most importantly, about deep connection, about how to enter into another person's world instead of trying to pull them into ours.
But how well have I applied this concept to my work with students? Not very well. I pride myself in being able to help a a student who started out barely able to write a sentence to the point where he is walking across a stage. I like to see the way service-learning projects change students' views or help them to find a passion for social justice. I am outcome-oriented. I always have been.
Speaking of circles, haven't I written about this before? Maybe it's all I ever write about--this tension between wanting to create change and wanting to take my time being fully present with other people, understanding how they see the world, finding a way to create a space for real connection. But, what is connection if it is not connected in some real way to social change? What is a story if it is not part of the larger story of how we grow to understand each other, to peel away the layers of oppression and privilege until we live in a just world?
It would be impossible to write about death without also writing about the many kids who have killed themselves in that past few months--the numbers I've seen have ranged from six to 14, and I'm not sure anymore what accounts for the differences. I know, of course, that suicide is never as simple as, "I was gay, people didn't accept me, I killed myself." I also feel a bit of discomfort about politicizing deaths like these. At the same time, what could possibly be more political than how we die, besides how we live? Do we live in a society where we are hated, tolerated, or truly integrated and honored for the gifts we have to give? Do we live in a society where we are lovingly cared for at the end of life, where we don't choose our own deaths, but we are willing, like the leaves in Oliver's poems, to lie down--even longing for such rest? Can we ever see death through lenses that do not evoke some kind of longing for something that can't be won't be--can we ever stop saying, "What if so-and-so had only lived a little longer?"
Oliver goes on, "And don't you think/the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,/warm caves, begin to think//of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep/inside their bodies? And don't you hear/the goldenrod whispering goodbye,/the everlasting being crowned with the first/tuffets of snow?"
The answer to these rhetorical questions is, only if you are listening. I write this not to evoke notes forgiving me, or assuring me that I couldn't have prevented anyone's decision to die--but I do know that I have not always listened. Sometimes this has been because the person across from me isn't communicating in a way I can understand. Maybe I think it's pretentious or overly self-pitying or overly theoretical. Maybe I don't want to bother to go further--or I've tried, and he hasn't wanted to go there. Whatever the situation, it is easier to close doors, to turn away. Easier to think, "I don't want this"--this friendship, this student-teacher relationship, whatever--"to be this hard." There is a restlessness to many interactions in this time of economic challenge, when everyone is trying to do more with fewer resources, less time. And yet, the seasons go on changing. Our surroundings, even with their subtle changes, remain familiar.
"The pond/vanishes, and the white field over which/the fox runs so quickly brings out/its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its/bellows. And at evening especially,/the piled firewood shifts a little,/longing to be on its way."
Perhaps we all long for the fire. We want to be made new, to be born again. We don't want to die, most of us, but we all need rest, an through that rest, we have the potential to transition into a new, better version of ourselves. Even then, we dance in the same circle of characters, regardless of how or when or whether we tried to make an escape.
What I know from my student's memorial is that I was not the only person who misunderstood him--but also, I've learned that many, many people did not. Many people saw his brilliance, understood that he couldn't learn or be in relationship in the conventional ways. He connected to some of us on very deep levels. The rest of us can remember comical misunderstandings, or moments when we got close to knowing him, or allowing him to know us.
His death has made me want even more to start Healing Ranch, and to think more clearly and deeply about its mission. Maybe the ranch should not be focused on transitions in the traditional sense of the term--on setting goals, on trying to discover one's gifts and applying them--but rather on the journey from tree to ground, on finding a way out of the wind, a way to rest and evaporate and come back in some new form. And then, once we have found our way to the fire, we can look at the world, and not where we want to fit into it, but how we can change it so that anyone, everyone, could draw their circles in the sand, and dance.
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