The unexpected reason I’m glad to be writing these blog posts
Maybe you’ve gone to the funeral of a relative or friend and in their eulogy learned several details about them you wish you’d known sooner. Maybe you’ve heard those close to them tell about their influence, and you’ve realized you never appreciated the full impact of that person’s life.
This is the way I feel about my wife since starting this blog. Hearing from those who knew her has been the greatest unexpected blessing to me of posting here.
Discovering the good
I must admit that from the week I first began this blog, I was second-guessing myself. Was I doing the right thing? Was I simply whining in public and asking for attention? What good would this do besides allowing me a very public catharsis?
But since then, so many have written to thank me. As it turns out, none of us has escaped suffering or disappointment, and all of us want to learn from another’s experience at coping with the pain. More to the point, every week I hear from someone new whose family has been pierced by Alzheimer’s. It really does help to know, “I’m not the only one facing this.”
Nicole Wilcox photo at Unsplash
But beyond all that is the flood of good wishes and happy memories about my wife that have come our way. Often I share these notes with her. Always they help me learn something new about the way she impacted others.
Remembering the impact
One purpose of this blog has been to chronicle the journey. So, for the sake of memory, I want to share here a couple of those unbidden tributes to Evelyn. It’s nice to hear such things. (It’s also good, by the way, to say them, while the special person is still with us, too, but that’s a different post.) And someday when she’s gone, maybe someone will read them aloud again.
From a former student, Megan Heath, whose private message to me she gave permission for me to share:
I had Evelyn for quite a few classes when I attended Cincinnati Bible College starting 10 years ago. I was a shy, awkward kid, 700-plus miles from home. Mrs. Taylor and I weren’t particularly close, in that we didn’t spend hours talking after class or I never came to your home, etc. But she meant the world to me. She looked a lot like my mom and had that same gentle spirit I missed so desperately. Her dedication to her job and us as students was so obvious. She loved what she did, and she was good at it. I always looked forward to her classes. It was really the only place I felt “seen” on that campus. She would give me a smile every time I saw her that felt just like home.
I read this to Evelyn and showed her Megan’s picture (they’re Facebook friends), and she smiled and remembered.
From another former student, commenting on last week’s post:
Maaaany years ago Mrs. Taylor taught my freshman college English course. I was in deep rebellion at the time and was showing it by consciously flunking her class at a school I didn’t want to be at. She recognized that fact and asked me to come to her office in the back staircase of Alumni Hall, where she kindly gave me an earful, one of many meetings we would have about my misdirection. She simultaneously saw me and saw through me in such an honest but kind way, I never forgot it. I am so grateful for those lessons in kind rebuke and that she is being taken care of in her time of need.
After I read Evelyn this comment, I asked her, “Do you remember Greg?” We were both puddling up. “Oh, yes,” she answered. “He was a good boy.”
Finally, a comment to an earlier post from her former colleague Myron Williams:
Hiring your wife as a full-time professor was one of the best choices I made as academic dean. Servant, team player, wise, humorous (oh the lunches in Old Main), and above all a professional in all she did. Thanks for this reminder of a woman who left a legacy when she retired from teaching that will live for generations to come.
I read this one to her with a broken voice, and she had tears too. “I want a copy of that,” she insisted. After I copied and printed it for her, she folded the half sheet and tucked it into a book on the coffee table. Regularly she pulls it out to show to a friend or to me again.
Evelyn received the student-chosen Teacher of the Year award at graduation in 2013.
Considering the take-aways
I’m finding so many take-aways from these comments and Evelyn’s response to them.
• We may never realize the power of doing our job as well as possible.
• We may never know the impact of warm smiles or genuine concern expressed with love.
• And when we’ve seen the influence of someone special in our own struggling day-to-day, it’s never too soon to thank them.
Alas, for Evelyn, it was almost too late for her to hear how these and others really felt about her. But now these tributes have been recorded, and that seems to me a good enough reason for launching this blog.