Darkness comes so easily after deep loss.
Light is more difficult. You have to insist upon light. Light comes only when you have courage enough to wrestle with darkness and drive it out.
I've been lucky. I've had a long-good life. For nearly forty years Nancy and I had a wonderful life. We worked together. I was a college professor most of the forty years we loved together. She was a high-school teacher and coach. She loved teaching and coaching, and she included me in everything she did, in every way she could. I never did anything really important. I just hung around, doing whatever little jobs for her she could cobble together at a moment's notice.
I did really important stuff like make sure my car-trunk was open, so that her pompon girls could store their coats there while they marched across the campus to the football game with the band, on gusty, frigid evenings. Plus I lugged a few extra pairs of shoes and lollies for any girl who might have forgotten hers. Dumb little custodial jobs like that. I never meddled in Nancy's planning or preparations for the teams she coached. That was HER work. I was her helper. I gladly did what she asked of me. And had fun doing it.
Thing was, though: I was a university professor who taught undergraduate and graduate courses for wanna-be and practicing teachers. Working with Nancy kept me involved with her students and colleagues at the school. Many of her colleagues took graduate courses from me. . .some of her administrators, too. So I had ready access to her school and had access to so many of the extra-curricular activities. I may have been one of the few education professors at my university who actually worked in a public school among busy teachers, and developed a feel for what went on in such a place. I knew and liked her professional colleagues. And I got to know many students really well. . .how they felt, what they knew, what school had come to mean to them in good and troublesome terms.
All that hands-on professional experience with Nancy was a great advantage to me. It helped me better judge the value of what textbooks and professional articles had to say about good classroom teaching and school leadership. I dealt with high-school kids every day. I liked them and developed with them the best relationships I could. All this made me a better, more minutely informed professor than many of my colleagues who rarely saw the inside of a school and never worked with teachers and students every day. At least I should've been better.
And I hope I was.
My wife's pompon squad was made up of two dozen or more really bright and skillful young women. At any time over the years, her team members occupied almost every student leadership position in the school. They worked in the offices. They were class officers at nearly every grade level. They were the bright and eager kids in every classroom. They worked for teachers at stenographic and teaching materials development tasks. They were prob'ly the nicest and hardest-working kids in the school. Beyond that, their parents were usually occupied with Nancy and me in developing and working at school fund-raising activities. Over the years I became a sort of universal grandparent to Nancy's pompon squad members. In some ways, we often came to feel like family.
Some families produced two or three daughters who went with Nancy through the pompon team experience. Most younger daughters followed their older sisters into poms. We went to camp together in the summers. We washed thousands of cars raising money. We inaugurated an elaborate series of challenging fund-raisers over the years, and a whole series of generous parents supplied wonderful leadership for those activities. Now, years later, many of those activities have become traditional. . .stuff like elaborate craft-shows that featured the same artistic vendors every fall, for instance.
Good parents are hard workers and skillful leaders. Good parents produce wonderful kids. Good parents make great friends, too. Nowadays I frequently run into these parents and/or their now-full-grown pom-kids. Usually these once-young pom-squad members have their own beautiful kids in tow. And, believe me, the old saying is true: "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!"
And it touches me to hear them say how much they miss Mrs. Meadows. Most of these new parents have enjoyed wonderful university experiences, have married well, and remind me so much of their parents (who are now happy grandparents) that I have trouble separating out the generations. I'm now seventy-five. In a short while, I expect to run into second -- maybe third -- generation pom-kids whose daughters have followed their mothers into rich pom experiences of their own.
I guess I should expect that. Most of Nancy's original poms were kids who had begun dancing lessons when they were maybe two or three years old. There is little else a growing teenager can do with a dozen years of dance lessons. Few become professional dancers. Many performed on Nancy's pom squads. Sometimes two or three sisters in a row. Sometimes two or more sisters on the squad at the same time. Older sisters help the younger. This sisterly help gives them an advantage at audition time.
Pompons is a challenging combination of dance and gymnastics moves. A three-minute competitive routine involves a long sequence of single-beat rhythms, incorporating several moves per beat. . .specific head, arm, leg and torso moves combined in such challenging ways as to be thrilling to watch. Soaring toe-touches and a wide variety of challenging jumps abound in a typical routine. Formation changes are continuous throughout the routine. The moves are performed in unison with great precision. Movements snap individually. Yet a routine soars to exciting music. Formations change and flow continuously. The girls are crisp and lovely, their hair done up tightly in trim braids, their uniforms colorful, trim, and modest. No doubt about it: pom-squad members are beautiful young women, practiced and masterful, proudly representing their schools.
Okay! I know. The truth? You have to SEE and HEAR a pompon routine to realize what it looks and feels like.
But about poms: you work with kids like this, you're apt to love school in general. You learn to appreciate how talented young people can be. Not just poms. . .all kids. . .because youngsters are so talented in so many different ways. After years of such work I've developed a different sense about teen-age kids and school. Even now, despite Nancy's absence, I thoroughly enjoy interacting with school-kids. I like those moments when I meet ex-pom kids in the grocery store or the mall. . .wherever. They've grown into remarkable people, energetic and responsible. . .good parents eager to introduce me to their own children.
Meeting these old pom-kids helps me. Seeing them, interacting with them, makes me know I'm making progress overcoming the emotional turmoil associated with Nancy's death, nearly four years ago. I know it for several reasons, but especially I realize it when I run into Nancy's pom-kids, engage them in conversations, learn about their careers and growing families. For months after Nancy's death, seeing old squad-members, catching-up with their lives, remembering the good times Nancy and I spent with them. . .all this made me sad. But increasingly, such meetings and remembering make me happy, make me laugh out loud. At least there's more joy than sorrow in such meetings as time passes. More light than darkness.
Emily Dickinson has a poem I've long-since learned by heart. It reflects the progress I'm making as I resolutely work through my grief. It goes something like:
We grow accustomed to the Dark--
When Light is put away--
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye--
A moment--We uncertain step
For newness of the night--
Then--fit our Vision to the Dark--
And meet the road--erect--
And so of larger--Darknesses--
Those Evenings of the Brain--
When not a Moon disclose a sign--
Or star--come out--within--
The Bravest--grope a little--
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead--
But as they learn to see--
Either the Darkness alters--
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight--
And life steps almost straight.
I think EmilyD used the dashes to mark the halting progress made through hard work with grief.
Emily helps me grapple with my sadness. I slowly come to recognize the truth of her words: darkness alters, though terrible loss remains. Perhaps, as EmilyD might say: though terrible loss remains terrible, perhaps even terribler. . .we somehow discover ways to adjust our sight until "life steps almost straight." and we can continue on, proud and "erect." The burden grows no lighter. Yet we learn to balance it more lightly. With strength of mind, we become grateful at last.
When sadness descends, I have learned to ask myself: "What if I had never met Nancy, had not known her at all?' It helps me to remember that for nearly forty years we lived together, worked together -- loved each other and the shared work.
My friends assure me: "You were lucky. Few have enjoyed such a rich and loving life." And when they say that to me, I think to myself: "YES! We were lucky!"
But I also know we were always mindful. We realized what we had together.
And we took pains to live together
with generosity, artistry and skill.
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