I’ve narrowed down the likely time of my death to June or July 2022. I’m tracking a bunch of empirical data and the trend line crosses from “will probably wake up tomorrow” to “probably won’t” some time in there. It’s kind of an imprecise thing, you know. “The doctor said my husband would only live two weeks and he lived three! Doctors don’t know what they’re talking about.” Yeah, right. His message to you was hurry up and get to things you can’t do after he’s dead, because that’s coming quickly. But, I digress.
So, in an era of lockdowns, mass panic over a cold virus that 99.7% of those infected survive, limited travel and not liking to talk on the phone, I’m writing e-mails. I’m going through my address book alphabetically, and the first on the list is Abigail. It’s an unusual story. Her father has been a good friend since 1980, I took him under my wing when he switched fields in the military and he did well. My wife met a woman in our neighborhood in Munich, Germany, said her name was Jane, and they hit it off immediately. Lots of shared interests.
We had taken our two girls with us in 1986, and I learned that our second-grader had a best friend, a classmate named Rachel. They were still at the crawling-on-the-floor-making-animal-noises stage at that time. Thirty-five years later they call each other weekly. In 2002 Rachel was a bridesmaid at our daughter’s wedding; in 1994 our older daughter sang at Sarah’s wedding.
Our sixth grader had a close friend, a classmate named Sarah, with whom she still talks and e-mails occasionally. Imagine our surprise when all four of us were invited to attend a baptism on the same day of a girl named Abigail. She was a newborn, beautiful the way all newborns are beautiful. Glenn and Jane were the parents of Rachel and Sarah, and now Abigail.
Our younger daughter and Rachel played together most days. We had meals at one another’s houses, babysat, did the usual close friend stuff you do. Jane was a lay preacher, and when the congregation at our small nondenominational chapel organized its own events, Jane would deliver a message and I would play either the piano or organ.
I remember when Abigail was two years old, she was pestering Rachel and our youngest constantly to play with them. They weren’t interested, the age gap was too big then. It was the only time I saw Abigail get angry. I recall her visiting us one day and saying, “Look, Mister Bill, I’m wearing Big Girl pants” as she pulled up her skirt to show me she was out of diapers.
Jane, Glenn and gang had retired to Dayton, Ohio, and when I retired for the next-to-last time in 2003 we did as well. Glenn continued working and, after ordination, became a pastor for a local congregation. We attended Abigail’s plays at school, Jane and Glenn attended music concerts using tickets our older daughter got them through her connections in the music industry.
One day, Jan called me all upset. Abigail’s teacher had assigned the class a book to read in which one character was gay, and had a troubled relationship. Jane thought that this kind of thing should be kept out of ninth grade classes, not remembering how mature she had felt at Abigail’s age. I let her talk through her feelings, and moved us to an agreement frame. I matched her tone, tempo, word choice, breathing, agreeing with her, then began leading her. I said we should have the classics taught in ninth grade, and offered as examples first Shakespeare’s Hamlet, then Moby Dick, and finally Oedipus Rex. Agree, agree, agree. “You know, the Greek story of Oedipus, who kills his father, has sex with his mother and puts out his own eyes.” Oh. The silence was a negative sonic boom.
In 1999 our family of four took a cruise to Anchorage, Alaska, and met Sarah and her husband for breakfast. We took many pictures, prepared Jane for the shock when she visited them the next year to learn that Sarah was a decidedly independent woman. My wife eventually convinced Jane to accompany her on a girl’s trip cruise, and her family was soon cruising at least twice a year. We’re still at once every eighteen to twenty-four months.
Sarah grew up completely and became a school teacher. She has two teenagers of her own and has swallowed the teachers’ unions’ lines whole. Nobody can judge a teacher but another teacher. All other professions sure, but teachers are special. Our relationship has cooled, because No Kid Left Behind was closing the black-white achievement gap at three points a year until Obama threw the kids under the school bus, promising to dismantle it sucking up to teachers. Oh, well, it’s just our kids’ futures.
Rachel is a wonderful and creative person. We don’t correspond often, but she still calls me her second Dad. Abigail is, well, different. She’s brilliant, talented, unafraid, and gone around a couple of bends. She’s declared herself pansexual, which I understand to have limits only when it comes to major household appliances. She is convinced that Trump is the Anti-Christ, although she denies that there is a Christ, which rather confuses me. She has told her parents that if they vote for Trump, she’s never speaking to them again. How do I convey what she means to me in an e-mail to someone I love but I’m not sure I know any longer?
Abigail, of course, is just the first, and far from the most complicated. Another couple hundred to go.
Thank you so much for sharing your final voyage. I often think about the many people that have added to the richness of my life. They may not be part of the current act, but nonetheless an important layer to the story of my life.