The email was entitled "Sorry to have to tell you this" and was from one of my students who came to Austin to be on the panel with me. When I opened it up I found out that one of his classmates, a young man who had been in the same AP Government class with him, had passed away that morning. And the effect on me was immediate and profound. I knew he had not been the picture of perfect health, often missing school, and that his family had sought out appropriate medical treatment. It was a family I knew well, having dealt with his Dad in his professional capacity, and having taught his older sister and written her college recommendations.
Certainly my sorrow pales next to that of his family, and it is not why I am writing this. Perhaps it is because at age 62, with both of my parents long dead, with learning each year of the deaths of more high school and college acquaintances, I ponder death a bit more often. When I wrote on June 1 about the oncoming death of our College's long-time athletic director, someone who is my age contemporary wrote "Ah. We've reached the age, you and I, when so many of those we knew are on their deathbeds." So forgive me, but I want to ponder death this morning.
Our school has about 2,800 students. He was not the first student to die in the ten years since I arrived, although he is the only one of whom I know who passed through my classroom. He was a bright, sweet, kid. I am pained by his death at so young an age (he had just finished 10th grade). But death is not unknown in our community.
We have a faculty and staff of over 180 when we include teachers, counselors, security personnel, cafeteria personnel, secretaries, custodians, etc. In a community of 3,000 while we may go through an entire year when no member of our community passes, it is not unusual for one of those members to lose a family member. It is parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, even spouses. And while ours is not by nature a violent community, we have had students who killed other people.
Death is from disease and from accidents, far too many in incidents involving motor vehicles. And rarely, death comes from the deliberate actions of others. Yesterday I racked my brain trying to remember if we have lost anyone in Iraq or Afghanistan. I seem to have put up barriers in that part of my mind, because it would be so painful were someone that I knew, perhaps had taught or coached, to have died in something as senseless as our debacle in Iraq, or so poorly executed as our actions in Afghanistan.
I am no stranger to death. My mother died when I was only 17, and my father's mother died a few weeks later. That same summer, his aunt, who had been a surrogate mother for him when he first came to NYC, slipped into a terminal coma from her cancer, lingered, and then passed. The deaths had impact upon me, but more indirectly, through his suffering and sorrow. One classmate, Howard S., died of leukemia during our junior year of high school.
350 of us graduated from Mamaroneck in 1963, Those still alive are now all at least 62, most being 63. Most have now buried parents, a few also spouses and children. At reunions we always have a list of all who are no longer with us, a list that grows during each 5 year period.
My original class at Haverford had 130. Perhaps another 8 joined the class before it graduated - without me - in 1967. We went more than twenty years before any of us left the world of the living, but in recent years the numbers have begun creeping up. And the professors who so influenced us? Too many of them have also passed on, as did Dana, our longterm athletic director. I have written of participating in a performance of the Verdi Requiem, dedicated to William Heartt Reese, the long-time choral director. And the man who had the greatest influence on me, Bill's successor as head of the Music Department, John Davison, who had been Bill's student when John was a member of the class of '51, had predeceased him, passing of cancer. Bill spoke at his Quaker Memorial service at Haverford Friends Meeting House.
Earlier this week through miscommunication (largely mine) my wife did not know where I was, and could not reach me by phone. She was panicked. As she reminded me when we finally connected, I am of an age where things happen, and if I change plans I really need to leave a message so that she doesn't worry so much.
I am not obsessed by death. I am rarely unaware of the possibility. For someone who is more than ten pounds overweight, my health is not bad, and I have no intimations of an oncoming of my own passing. Lacking biological children, I wonder what will remain of me when I am no longer alive. Certainly the words that I commit to paper or electrons may be around for people who knew me to turn to, or for others yet to encounter. But those seem less important than the lives with which mine intersects. That can be through my writing to be sure, it is far more likely to be through my teaching and previously my coaching (music theater as well as soccer). Having had my own life profoundly affected by those who taught and coached me, I take very seriously the responsibility I have for those who pass through my care.
And perhaps that is why the death of which I learned yesterday affected me so deeply. No parent wants a child to die before them, that I understand. I am deeply sorrowed for his family. And for people 15 and 16, when one of their classmates die, it is deeply painful, even if we adults do not always recognize it. When we have lost a student during the year, we always bring in grief counselors, and are generous with those students who need time to adjust. We make sure that all the faculty and staff know when one of our students loses a parent, or more rarely a sibling. Thinking back, in 13 years since I became a public school teacher I have never gone through a school year where one of my own students did not suffer a loss of parent, grandparent, or favorite aunt or uncle, or in one case a cousin who was more like a surrogate father and who was murdered. At any given moment I teach something over 120 students, sometimes as many as 180. Between varsity and jv, boys soccer had close to 50 players at a time once we have made the final cuts. The mathematics are such that we probably should expect deaths, just as in a community whose immediate membership is over 3,000, the size of a small town, especially when immediate family is included, and death is not unknown in small towns.
The passing of someone I knew of course affects me. But it also connects me with the deaths of those I have never met. This young man had serious medical issues. It was personal because he was my student. His passing reminds me that he had access to the best medical care. And yet, in our county, in our school system, a young boy died because he didn't have access to dental care. And that death which so shocked the nation reminded us all how many young people have their lives cut short because they lack access to proper basic medical care, they do not receive proper nutrition, and so many other things about which I could write.
I realize that in large part I became a teacher because of what other teachers had done for me, how for a very troubled young man in an exceedingly dysfunctional family it was teachers and administrators who often provided the adult connection that helped me sort through the difficulties of living. They made a difference for me, and I feel an obligation to pass that on to others.
My teaching is also a political act, one of attempting to empower those students who come through my classroom. It is because I deal with young people that I am so passionate about our political environment. Policies and politics have real consequences for real people, and I do not want to see one life wasted or destroyed because of some philosophical "principle."
He was a young man of quiet intellectual promise, a promise that can no longer be fulfilled. I look back with sadness at our brief time together, sadness, but also some joy at the moments where his quiet comment or question might bring a focus to an otherwise unnecessarily diffuse discussion. I won't forget him.
And I realize that I have a further responsibility, one in which I have been somewhat a failure. That is not to forget any of the students who pass through my care. The total is now several thousand, and some faces and far too many names are now lost to me. Sometimes I encounter them and they remind me. Each one is a precious responsibility, and I must honor the uniqueness of each one, especially those that frustrate, annoy and bait me. I should remember how much of a problem I was for so many of my teachers and professors.
I may never know what happens to my students. Nor will I know what happens to many of the people whose lives intersect mine only briefly. I often wonder what people will remember of me. When I was younger and far MORE insecure (which indicates that to some degree I still am) I wondered if anyone would even note my passing, or would I die alone in a room by myself, only noticed when my corpse began to stink. No one should be so isolated. I am not, but what about those from whom we avert our eyes when we walk down the street, or when they hold up signs at the stoplight asking for assistance?
A student died, in his mid teens. And his death has been yet another occasion for me to reflect. Perhaps at my age, knowing I have lived well more than half my life, in all probability more than two thirds, reflection is a normal process. It has always been this way for me.
There is an old Jewish tale. A man asks Rabbi Eleazer when a man should repent, and is told he should do so on the day before he dies. The questioner wonders what man knows the day of his death and is told that is precisely the point.
Perhaps it is not repentance. Perhaps it is reflection, ongoing, at least at a semiconscious level. Those of you who know your J. D. Salinger may remember in "Franny and Zooey" reference to a book called "The Way of the Pilgrim." It is about a 19th century Russian layman who is attempting to live a life fulfilling the dictate of Paul to pray without ceasing. In the Orthodox tradition, the prayer would be the Jesus Prayer. In its longest form, it goes "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy upon me a sinner." Orthodox monks may say it thousands of times a day. Some do a full prostration upon every recitation. Others will repeat it soundlessly while fingering another knot on the black knotted rope that is the Orthodox equivalent of a rosary, with the number of knots ranging from 30 to 300. One who practices the prayer develops an ability to repeat it while concentrating on other things - the prayer begins to "pray itself" as the Pilgrim discovers.
So it is with reflection, which is not dissimilar from prayer. It is the process of developing an awareness, of being able somehow to step outside oneself and perceive the impact of one's words and actions even as they are ongoing- call it "metacognition." And after all while it can become almost intuitive, anticipatory, so that it serves as a brake on perhaps normal impulses of anger or irritation that while temporarily seeming to assuage one's own pain may cause far greater pain to others and to oneself.
I am exploring doing a book on my own religious peregrination. Part of what has fueled my travels through various traditions leading me to my current religious homeostasis in the Society of Friends (Quakers) has been the search for deep meaning, and of course that includes the meaning of life which inevitably invokes the meaning of death. Insisting upon a reflective stance can provide the stillness in which clarity is possible. My wife pointed out to me that one of the most important Biblical passages for me, as long as she has known me (now more than a third of a century) has been from First Kings 19:
And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake:
and after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave.
A still small voice
Perhaps it is again to hear that soft, quiet, and thoughtful voice of a young man who is no longer with us. Perhaps it is hear the unspoken pain of a troubled student, or to hear through the raucous political discourse which currently surrounds us the real needs of real people.
I claim no wisdom. I struggle with so much of everyday living. The more I reflect the more aware I become of my own failings. But what sustains me is that I simultaneously become cognizant of the great generosity I receive from others, and then I feel empowered, even obligated, to return the favor, to myself be more generous and giving than I otherwise in my own pain might have thought possible.
The death of a young man. I do not deny the tragedy that it represents, the very real loss of possibility and promise. And thus I have the deep sadness to which I refer in my title. But to honor having known him, I choose to do more than mourn his passing. I choose to experience him as a still small voice, a voice that speaks more powerfully than wind, earthquake or fire. A voice that tells me to turn that sadness and mourning into something that heals, that moves us in a positive direction.
If I ponder death, I am inevitably brought back to life. Lincoln pondered death at Gettysburg and told us
It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
Unfinished work. . .
The responsibility of my work will never be complete. My life will end at some point, perhaps soon, perhaps later. Every day gives me an opportunity to have my life intersect with that of others. My work? To leave the world a better place than I found it, one full of more possibilities for the people I encounter, especially the young people for whom I am "teacher." And that is the true joy of teaching, of living. Even as age and infirmity may limit the range of possibilities still open to me - I will never play major league baseball - the closing of one path makes me aware of others perhaps not visible in the bright light of dreams fantastic or achievable. Death may end that possibility of exploration, but until my own death everything I encounter, each person whose life path crosses my own, is a possibility of a different kind of exploration, a chance for me to grow, and to help others grow.
Does this make sense to anyone except me? Does it even make sense to me? It does not matter whether I can express it cogently or succinctly. Intuitively I understand it. I have in the passing of a student yet again heard a still small voice for which I am grateful. I mourn his passing at so young an age, and thank him for blessing my life with his presence.
Peace.