Eulogy For a Best Friend

Crocuses in our front garden in late March

Seven months ago, I wrote on this blog, “I have faith spring will come again—and I hope it brings only what we are able to bear.”  I had no idea then that just as the first crocus opened, glowing a translucent purple in the sunlight, the phone would ring, and I would learn yet again how much loss we are able to bear.

On March 23, 2015, my beloved friend of twenty-four years, Amy Winans, died.  I have written and said those words so many times now—Amy died—but each time, I feel a small shock. 

This is the (only-slightly-edited) eulogy I delivered on March 28 at the memorial service for her at the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, much of it written during sleepless hours that week:

Amy and I became friends in the beginning of 1991 at Penn State.  Our mutual friend Andrea introduced us so we could help each other study for our PhD candidacy exam.  Amy helped me with American lit, and I helped her with British.  At our first meeting, one evening in the Kern Graduate Commons, where the food service was closed for the night, I noticed Amy picked at the Chinese take-out she had brought with her.  “She is clearly more interested in the conversation,” I thought; I was hungry, and the Chinese food looked good to me.  I had a similar thought more than two decades later, as we sat across another table, this time in St. Louis, where Amy was a presenter at 4Cs, the major, annual, college composition conference.  As I ate my share of the vegetarian platter we had ordered at the Ethiopian restaurant, I had to remind her to eat. 

Most of our friendship was long distance, especially after I moved to Champaign, Illinois, in 1997 to join the English faculty at Parkland College.  But we stayed in touch always, and we found ways to share our experiences in real time.  When the TV show ER was in its heyday, we would get on the phone during the long commercial break halfway through the episode and compare notes.  When she was on the job market the fall after I moved to the Midwest, we consulted by phone about what she should wear to job interviews at the huge, annual MLA convention. 

Mostly, though, we wrote.  Emails with Amy’s signature cheers, “Go team!” (this woman who did not watch sports) and “You can do it!” got me through my dissertation and many other challenges.  She was also the most devoted cheerleader of my creative endeavors, sending me beautiful paper to use in my art and mailing me books about art and writing.  Less than a week before she died, she forwarded me an announcement about a workshop I might want to check out. 

One of Amy's multi-part letters.  She often wrote over
a few days, sometimes on flights, at the airport,
at her daughter's swim lesson.  The sight of her
handwriting brought me comfort.

I always scanned my inbox for Amy’s emails first, and her handwriting in our mailbox was one of my greatest joys and comforts—and constants.  We exchanged hundreds of letters.  She joked that some future graduate student could write about our letters for her dissertation.  Here are some of Amy's letters to me, mailed in South Africa, Raleigh, Seattle, Puerto Rico, and, of course, Harrisburg.  One was mailed to me when I was in India.

To Amy, I wrote like I wrote to no one else: journal-like letters.  The night after I heard she had died, I couldn’t sleep.  So I did what I often did when I couldn’t sleep:  I wrote to Amy.  Here is that letter.  I wrote it on purple stationery.  Amy said I was the greatest supporter of her passion for purple.  I take pride in that position.  I am reading from a copy; I left the original with her this morning.

Champaign, IL. Wed. March 25, 2015.  5 AM

Amy dear,

I cannot sleep, so what else to do but write another middle-of-the-night letter to you?  This is the first morning I will wake up—if I sleep—knowing you will not write me another letter.  I cannot say “you will not be here” because you will always be here, with me.  After twenty-four years of friendship, you are a part of me.  Nothing I say, especially in my heartbroken state, seems enough.  You believed in my best self, Amy, and you helped me to believe in it, too.  You were my constant: your handwriting appearing in my mailbox nearly every week—until the depression struck you—your love in the hardest and happiest of times; your keen, editorial eye on my writing; your itineraries in my inbox, always making sure I could reach you.  How will I reach you now, my friend?  To whom will I write in the middle of a crazy day to be reassured I will survive this profession we love and which wears us down?  For whom will I buy purple?  Whom will I write at 4 AM and trust to understand?  Who else can read my 4 AM handwriting?

There is a large Amy-shaped hole in the world now, and I will have to learn how to live in that world, a world I couldn’t imagine before but have to inhabit now. 

Somehow, all of us, but especially Tony and Aurelia, will have to learn to live without your presence and to remind ourselves of the love with which you showered us.

I miss you my friend.  I always will.

Love, Umeeta

Now I would like to read you a poem that makes me think of Amy and her passing: “Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard” by Kay Ryan.  [Here is a link: Kay Ryan's "Things Shouldn't Be So Hard" ]

Amy left deep tracks in so many lives, on so many of our hearts.  Things shouldn’t be so hard.

Amy's crocuses were blooming the week she died.

I’ll end with Amy’s words, words from one of the wisest people I have ever known.  The first quote is from an email she wrote on the evening of Thursday, September 2, 2010. I was struggling with a new course and recovering from two car accidents in which I had been rear-ended while at red lights and left with pain in my right shoulder.  Her words put things in perspective:  Remember how Oliver has that poem that begins “you don’t have to be good”? Maybe as you think about your Lit class…  “you don’t have to be perfect” and remember it all. and get to it all…You get to be human—honest!  

I’ll close with a quote from an email Amy wrote in the early morning of January 29, 2014; I had been asked to write a chapter for a book, a chapter I was not sure I wanted to write, and Amy was helping me to decide how to respond.  She wrote: Feel free to give a call if you want to talk about the decision regarding writing.  My main suggestions at the moment:

1—what would be the most self-compassionate thing you could do?

2—set aside the shoulds (just read this in a letter from my very dear friend…) and follow #1.

Marilyn bought me these pansies to pot in Amy's memory.  On the Monday after the memorial service, we potted them  in what we have always called "the Amy pot," a teal, ceramic pot Amy brought for us in 2004 and in which, every year, I plant annuals that make me think of Amy.  Those pansies are still going, even in June, so I have bought two pots in periwinkle blue, a color Amy loved, and have planted summer flowers in those.  We will now have three Amy pots.  But how strange it is to plant flowers in memory of Amy instead of reading about her gardens in letters from her.

Flowers from Amy's memorial.  At the church, we surrounded them with photos of her and with academic journals in which her articles had been published.  Marilyn and I brought the flowers home with us and set them on our dining table.  In the top right corner of this photo is the candle Marilyn and I bought in Taos last summer.  We lit it every evening for Amy for weeks, until it burned down.  Each night, as I blew it out, I said good night to my dear friend.  I hope she is at peace now.  

I flew back to Pennsylvania in April for a weekend memorial service at Susquehanna University, where Amy was a beloved member of the English faculty.  While Amy's other best friend, Judy, drove, I took photos, imagining Amy making this drive hundreds of times.  I had never been to her campus before because it was an hour from her house--and I thought I could visit it another time--so on this visit, I took it all in: her department, her office, the view from her window as she sat in her chair.  

As I sat in Amy and Tony's living room on the second Sunday in April, I came across a pack of cards that belonged to Amy.  Each card had a different flower on it.  That the flower for friendship was purple, Amy's favorite color, seemed just right. 

I painted this "yarn bowl" for Amy at the end of February (I didn't include a photo of this bowl in my February post because it was a surprise for Amy, and she read my blog).  She knitted, too.  She received the bowl the week before she died, and she mentioned it in her last emails to me.  The bowl combines her favorite color, purple, and mine, blue.  It has our initials on the bottom.

The Urge to Make Things

One of the yarn bowls I painted two evenings ago.  It will look very different once it is fired next week.

Two evenings ago, as the snow swirled outside the large windows of the Illini Union Bookstore, I listened enthralled to a reading by Andre Dubus III.  He urged the writers in the audience to write, that writing was the point, that being published was nice, but that we have to write in the face of the inevitable rejection letters.  He described writing his novel House of Sand and Fog in twenty-minute segments while sitting in his car before he went in to teach at one of several jobs he was juggling at the time.  

After the book became a bestseller, he worked  on building his family home. At his reading at the bookstore, he spoke of framing his daughter's bedroom.   His agent asked him if he couldn't now pay someone else to do that, couldn't he get back to writing?  He was writing, he told his agent, but he also wanted to build his daughter's bedroom, that it was like tucking her into her blanket at night.  

Dubus was describing making things.  He built his novel a piece at a time, and later, he built his family home.  They were both acts of creation.  

When I left the reading, I headed over to the Pottery Place, where I painted yarn bowls with a dozen other knitters.  Yarn bowls are ingenious containers that keep yarn from rolling away under the coffee table while one is knitting.  I had never painted pottery before, but my nephews have painted gifts for me.  As I chose colors and brushes and came up with a design, I felt like a child, playful and ready to experiment.  As I painted, I got lost in the process.  The blank surface of the bowl was like my blank computer screen or a blank page in my journal: an invitation to create something that had never existed before.  

I left the Pottery Place just as it closed, accompanied by another knitter, someone I had met for the first time that evening.  We talked about how remarkable it was that in this world of mass production, we had just painted bowls that were almost certainly unlike any others in the world, and how that was like the knitting we did, too, as we tweaked patterns, chose yarn, and knitted with our very personal tension, so that my stitches and hers would be different.

I came home wanting to write, to knit, to paint some more, and soon.  What I needed to do was to sit down at the kitchen counter to grade a paper.  The next morning, I had to teach, and to give feedback on a couple of dozen drafts.  And that was okay.  The delight and inspiration from my evening lightened the work I had to do, and I went in to campus the next day reminded that my students were creating, too.  

The cardigan I have been knitting and hope to finish before the winter is done.  I had to take apart over forty rows of over six hundred stitches and start the cardigan over in October, when I discovered I had twisted it when I joined it in the round,  but I haven't become discouraged yet.  

I finished knitting this hat last night.  I began it during one of the pauses in knitting the cardigan, when I had to wait to get advice about a next step.  

My favorite chair, where I often read and write and where I am writing this.  The red notebook is my journal.  I went through about half a dozen notebooks last year.  

The Peace of Knitting

Knitting my first cardigan with this blue-violet-turquoise Malabrigo is making me very happy.

The repetition of knitting brings me peace. Looping yarn around needles, feeing its softness and its weight in my hand, watching a skein turn into a hat, a blanket, a scarf--I have found pleasure and comfort in this process for a dozen years now. When I spot a knitter waiting at the airport or in a clinic, I feel a kinship with this stranger and find comfort in watching her hands move.

Recently, I began knitting my first cardigan. I am taking a class at my local yarn store, Klose Knit; the teacher is a new friend I made at a knitting retreat last January, when I spent an entire day among knitters and learned how to cable for the first time.

This is the final stage of the hat I knitted after I learned how to cable.

Here are some photos from the early stages of the "Sheer Beauty" cardigan I am knitting. I began with 665 stitches; I have begun the decreases, but, still, it's a very good thing I love the process of knitting. Completing each row is a triumph, and it will be months before I'm done.

Knitting on the deck in the September sunshine while not knowing what time it is--one definition of paradise.

New Harmony in the Spring

On the grounds of the New Harmony Inn.  We always stay in a room facing the pond.

When Marilyn and I want to get away to somewhere quiet and peaceful, we head south to New Harmony, Indiana.  Sometimes, we stop for ice cream or pizza in one of the small eastern Illinois towns on our way.  Driving on, we predict when we will round the turn and encounter rows of bright green John Deere tractors available for sale.  Then we know we are getting closer.  We look forward to entering the familiar, sleepy, historic small town of New Harmony--population 850--where we always stay at the New Harmony Inn and always eat at least one meal at the Red Geranium Restaurant. The predictability is soothing.  

On March 21, as spring break began, we headed south again.

We found out that New Harmony is celebrating its bicentennial, and the weekend we were there, there was a "spring fling" with artists and other vendors in the small downtown.  "There are people on the street!" I exclaimed, laughing, as we walked around in the cold sunshine on Saturday.This brochure shows a design that incorporates the labyrinth, a landmark of this town founded by Utopians in the nineteenth century.

 

To show you how small the town is, I'm including the enlargement of the town center, which has the flashing stoplight marked prominently.  As we drove around when we first arrived on Friday evening, we were the only car in the town center, other than the Sheriff's patrol car parked on the corner.  Once we arrive, we don't drive either.  We can get everywhere we want to on foot.

This photo was taken in the small, round chapel off of the Great Room where breakfast is served.  Even when the Great Room is full of conversation and clatter, this chapel feels like a place for meditation.

Just outside the chapel, we encountered this piece, which we coveted for our backyard. Art like this is scattered all around New Harmony.

  

This was carved into the back of a bench outside the town post office.  I love writing and receiving letters, so I had to photograph this.

We saw our first daffodils of the season!

I love the red door and white walls of this church.  (These are also the colors of our house).

This log house, next to the Red Geranium Restaurant, was built in 1814 and restored in 1959-60.

On Saturday afternoon, as the sun streamed into the Great Room of the Entry House, Marilyn worked on a quilt while I finished knitting the hat I had begun in January. 

We saw more signs of spring on our walk around the pond on Sunday morning.

Poetry can be found around New Harmony, too.  This was along a trail.  Auden wrote, "The trees encountered on a country street/Reveal a lot about a country's soul./A culture is no better than its woods." 

This is "Shalev: Angel of Compassion" by Tobi Kahn.  It is made of South Dakota granite and bronze.  In the distance, you can see the Wabash River.

Before we left town on Sunday afternoon, we walked the labyrinth.  These are our shadows.

Snapshots of Winter

This winter, the weather has been the story: sub-zero temperatures alternating with frequent snow falls. We joke that 20 degrees Fahrenheit feels warm. The snow cover makes an otherwise dark time of year feel blinding at times. Nothing feels "average."  

Last night, as the local news announced yet another winter weather advisory, I said to Marilyn, "They probably have that recorded and just play it every three days."  

Today, our college, which rarely has a snow day, closed at 1 p.m. because the travel conditions were deteriorating.  

All through this remarkable winter, I have been taking photos.  Here are some of them.

Over MLK weekend last month, we went to Chicago for three nights, to rest, to get away, to read in a quiet room in the bustle of the city. We arrived just as the snow began on Friday night.

 

                 This was our view on Saturday morning.

On Saturday, we walked around in the slushy cold with ice chips flying at our faces  As we ate lunch, we smiled at the snow outside the window, happy not to be driving.  By afternoon, the snow was heavy.  

We finally made it to the Museum of Contemporary Art because it was close to our hotel.  We laughed as we trudged through snow to get there and were wary as we looked up the long flight if stairs leading to the museum entrance. This photo and the next two were taken after we had made it inside.

Back home again, I woke to this sunrise on a weekday morning.

I laughed when I saw this sign as I drove home from downtown on a recent  Saturday morning.  The temps were in the single digits.  I was wearing long johns again--long johns that I used to wear a few times a year but which I have had to wear several times a week this winter.  Still, it was a reminder that summer will come.

On Valentine's Day, Marilyn left this plant for me on my desk at work.  It made me think of our rose bush in the back garden, of walking along the path lined with ajuga and daisies.  Yes, summer will come.

In the meantime, staying inside means plenty of time for knitting.  I recently went on a retreat where I learned to cable.  This is the hat I'm making now, one of the few things I knit that I will keep for myself.  I look forward to working on it every evening.