The Relay: Passing the Baton

Dan and I sat side by side in a corner office on the 11th floor of Dana Farber. The young doctor came in, sitting opposite us, exchanging pleasantries about the December weather. Then, leaning forward, he gave us the news we expected but hoped we would never hear. The PET confirmed the metastasis of cancerous lesions in Dan’s body— from the lung to the liver, and so forth. The chief of thoracic cancer joined us, and together we discussed the options, none of which held promise for life beyond a year, much less a cure.

Driving home along Memorial Drive, we were quiet for the most part. About the only thing we could say was that we would make the most of our life together, one day at a time. As always, we walked in the back door of the condominium; as always, Dan headed for the mailbox. There on the bench was a large envelope addressed to me from HILR. Coming up in the elevator, our eyes met. Would it be yes? Or no?

Together in our small, pied-à-terre-like space on the fourth floor, space that we have called home for 25 years, we opened the envelope. Yes! I was accepted! At that moment the mutual tears flowed. I would be carrying on where he would be leaving off, entering when he was departing. He would pass the baton to me. It felt so right!

When Dan retired in 1995, I was still immersed in administration and teaching at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where I’d worked for more than 20 years. His sense of aimlessness was acute and bothersome to us both. I had heard about HILR, I’m not sure how, and suggested he apply. Finding the idea appealing, he became engaged with the application requirements, and, as the process evolved, I witnessed the stakes rising for him. He asked his former boss as well as a friend from years past to write letters for him, the latter being a member of HILR. As the weeks passed, I found the anxiety enveloping me as well—what in the world would he do with himself if he were denied admission? He was a man who lived and loved the life of the mind. While he also loved sailing and doing projects (mostly fixing whatever needed attention on the boat) in the summer, he and I both knew he needed to get beyond the newspapers and CNN in the remaining nine months of the year. And I was busy with my own concerns at work—dealing with the everyday matters of crisis management in a busy public institution. My worrying space, however, oversized, had little room for accommodating his needs, should they expand.

His packet arrived in the mail, and just as would happen ten years hence, we opened it together, holding our collective breath, figuratively if not literally. What a relief! What joy! He was in!

For the next ten years HILR was the focus of Dan’s life. He selected his courses with care, poring over the schedule book. It looked like fun to me, a buffet of delectable offerings from which to choose. And the buying of new books each semester became a ritual signifying a new beginning. Early on in his HILR tenure, a seasoned member asked him to co-teach an economics course. This endeavor received Dan’s full attention. He was nervous, as any good teacher should be, spending hours preparing for each class. Following class, he would come home happy or chagrined, depending on the ebb and flow of each week’s experience. This involvement escalated when he submitted his own course proposal. The preparation took weeks. I would find drafts at the breakfast counter that I read somewhat begrudgingly, trying to be supportive and constructive, while at the same time scanning the day’s Boston Globe before rushing off to work.

Being a study group leader at HILR realized one of Dan’s lifelong desires—to be a teacher/leader of an intellectual enterprise, one that dealt with philosophical/political/economic issues. He wanted to do his own writing as well, an effort that became a treatise that he started and re-started many times over. He felt that in his seventies he had found his calling, the academic life of studying, writing, and teaching. He would spend hours in the Harvard libraries—how he loved books! HILR gave him a new identity and a strong sense of purpose. He was not an “organization man” nor did he enjoy the casual social skills requisite to building a social network. His outside-of-class participation focused on content conversations during class breaks while indulging in cookies and coffee, and on participating regularly as a library volunteer.

Each semester was a new adventure. Each week, he would leave our dwelling, his backpack loaded with handouts, often copied at Kinko’s at a very late hour the previous night. I would go off to work hoping that all would go well. It did, for the most part, and he would celebrate with hot chocolate at Burdick’s and an evening report to me. I would be so happy for him, an 81-year-old who was experiencing a peak in his life.

By that time, he had taught or co-led ten courses. And he did yet another the following year. However, now his ability to hear was declining rapidly. I knew communication, even between us, was becoming more difficult. And loss of hearing seemed to exacerbate the encroaching failings of memory and of quick understanding. He knew his last course had not gone very well. However, his identity as a study group leader was now well internalized, and he plowed on, submitting yet another syllabus for the following year. The syllabus was not accepted. He was stunned.

His new identity that he so much enjoyed had been stripped away. One afternoon, sitting on a bench on the walking trail in the woods near our house on the Cape, he said he needed to talk to me. He felt he was depressed and was seeking help. I knew he was upset, but wasn’t aware of the depths of his feelings. I wonder today about that phenomenon—of living so closely with someone and yet not knowing the interior life of the other. He did two things. He began weekly therapy sessions with a marvelous woman who stayed with him until his death, even visiting him at home the week before he died.

And, he signed up for Fran Vaughan’s poetry class. At age 83 he was about to realize yet another rebirth.

A course or courses at HILR can open new worlds if one is open to a little risk-taking. It was a risk for Dan to show up in class with a piece of writing, a poem that would be shared with the others. Fran’s leadership created a community of poets where one’s writing was reviewed with a critical but empathetic eye. Dan’s motivation to enroll in a poetry writing class had come by default. His grandsons wanted him to write a narrative of his life; however, he found himself unable to put his life on paper this way, and so he signed up for the poetry class. He found his medium. My appreciation of HILR soared, for I knew how important this writing was to him.

And, so came December 8, 2005, the date of my acceptance and our learning of his imminent mortality. A short while later, our envelopes for spring registration arrived in our mailbox on the same day. Between visits to Dana Farber and Brigham and Women’s, we looked forward to going to the same school in the spring. This carried us through the holiday season, much of which Dan spent in the hospital with a severe eye infection. Our shared organizational membership was a first for us, creating a rich new connection.

I approached orientation day with some trepidation, feeling very much like a college freshman as I entered 51 Brattle Street. In the Common Room, I experienced new-kid-on-the-block feelings (as did others, I am sure); I chose a seat near the end of one of the neatly aligned rows and gave all my attention to the speakers. I held my new maroon bag with pride; it was just like Dan’s, as was my new badge. Putting it over my head, I felt as though I were anointing myself with a new identity—and I was.

Classes began the next week. Fortunately, Dan got his first choice, “Reading and Writing Poetry;” I received my second choice, “Novels of Academe,” led by Julie Altshuler. This class assignment turned out to be a blessing, for not only did I find my group challenging and enjoyable, it happened that Fran Vaughan’s poetry-writing course was literally next door to my classroom—on the same day at the same time! I could come and go with Dan and be physically close to him during the class hours. I remember that first day in February. He had gotten there on his own, for he wanted to come early. I ran into him at the break. He was trying to Xerox something at the last minute and was having some trouble with the machine. I saw someone moving forward to help him and so left him to his own devices. I was feeling quite awkward at my first break in the Common Room and so was happy to retreat to the social safety of my seat in the classroom.

As the weeks progressed and Dan grew steadily weaker, I was pleased to be near him, sharing the HILR experience. We would walk there together and come home together; the last two weeks, I drove him there, coming home and parking and walking back. As I headed toward my classroom, I would see him sitting as close to Fran as he could manage, for he wanted to be able to hear everything she said. He shared his poems and enjoyed those written by his classmates. One Monday morning he wasn’t sure he was up to going; his head was in his hands, and there were tears. I knew I was witnessing his first acknowledgement that he might be nearing the end. Feeling desperate for him and for me, I pushed him to reconsider. He did. We went. It was the day of the poetry roundtable; we were there in the Common Room together when Charlie Vivian was feted as the new poet laureate. Dan asked Molly Watts to read his “Set Dylan T. Aside.” She did so, beautifully. I felt such a strong sense of past, present, and future that afternoon—Dan’s past, our present, and my future at HILR. I will always remember my last sight of him at 51 Brattle, sitting on the low bench in the vestibule, waiting for me to come back in the car to pick him up after the roundtable was over.

I will also always remember the next Monday, April 10, when he simply could not make it; I went ahead to my class. As I passed by her room on the way to mine, I saw Fran sitting at the head of her table; I shook my head, and she folded her hands in the air, a moment of giving grace.

The next day I went to the new members’ reception. Dan’s brother had flown up from Florida to visit with him for the afternoon, and I was able to leave and run over to the Faculty Club. The social contact that afternoon helped sustain me through the next hours. Leonie Gordon made another of her fine short welcoming talks; the new and welcoming members drank wine and conversed enthusiastically about the benefits of membership in HILR. I was glad to be among them. On Thursday, Dan died.

The final weeks of the spring semester were a time of grief and wonder at the reality of death. HILR was there for me. There were notes, kind and warm greetings, and representation at Dan’s poetry event in early May, where again Molly read “Setting Dylan T. Aside.”

I missed one Monday of class, but came back, with Julie engineering a smooth re-entry for me. The class continued to be a delight. Julie had created a comfortable group who readily engaged in discussion of the text. And I continued to volunteer in Dunlop Library. I so relished those quiet hours there, sitting in the librarian’s chair, a chair which Dan had occupied for so many years, looking out at Brattle Street, being among books in a room that emanates a strong sense of tradition and love of learning. I went to several Friday morning lectures, and in June enrolled in Maurie Stein’s course, “Mindfulness and Meditation.” I moved on to my first summer without Dan with a sense of the joy of learning and community in the midst of my grief.

Now another year has passed. As well as continuing to volunteer in the library, I have served on a committee, enjoyed new friends and acquaintances, and co-led a study group. As I look back on my first-year-plus at HILR, I realize that I am not only carrying the baton handed me by Dan, but have developed an HILR identity of my own, one still in its early stages, but from which the following thoughts and feelings have emerged.

Most always, upon leaving 51 Brattle Street, I experience a feeling of buoyancy, of wellbeing. It’s a general feeling, not attached to any one conversation or new insight about our country. I believe this feeling comes from a sense of belonging symbolized by my donning the red ribbon ID tag upon entry and carefully putting it in its place when I arrive home. It is a symbol to me of permanence, of certainty—a guarantee of social and intellectual context for me as I age.

I do know that HILR can be more than a safe haven for my golden years. As is true with any endeavor, it will be for me what I make of it. I can use it as a venue for risk-taking. I can attempt to design and lead a study group. I can volunteer to be on committees that may or may not accept me. I can speak up in groups, be they social, learning, or task-oriented groups. I can ask someone to have lunch with me, and I can be of help to others, whether it be opening a door or listening.

I know, too, that HILR’s safe-haven feature can malfunction for me. Alas, I know that I tend to suffer from oversensitivity, for I am quick to be unduly bothered by rejection or slight. Thus, the perils of organizational life loom before me as they have since my initiation to insecurity in the hallways of high school. And, yet, what would my life be without organizational attachment to provide me with structure and purpose?

Most importantly, the membership represents a group which I admire and which challenges me to perform at a high level, to improve my knowledge and skills. I am excited about the energy at HILR, felt in any classroom, as well as in the Common Room and the hallways. It is energy that re-energizes me; and when I feel a surge of responsiveness or insight or belonging, then—well, life does matter.

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