Reading the Obits

I don't read the obituaries. My wife does. Odd given that I'm eleven years older, but that is the way it is. So it is unusual that I note the passage of someone I know. It happened a couple of years ago with someone I knew from a writing group I once was part of. I didn't know Sharma well, but she had passed through my life during a brief two year window and then I happened to see her obit. She had used a different name in the writing group so it was really an accident that I had seen her.

Not so this morning. And, yes it was my wife who brought it to my attention this time.

Don Summers, 68, died while on a teaching trip to Vietnam. This one is close. When I first came to Seattle another colleague from Boston suggested I talk with Don. Don was generous with his time and offered some useful suggestions to help me set feet down in the Northwest. He had preceded me by only a couple of years, worked in a senior role with a local bank, had been laid off following a merger (I think) and then set up his own consulting business which is when I met him.

I struggled to get started here. It was during the first Gulf War and everything was on hold. I had few connections in the community and got precious little business consulting. Then the person who connected me to Don, got me in touch with someone else and I got a gig for a year doing outplacement work for a somewhat sleazy low budget outfit. It kept food on the table. Shortly after that, Don suggested that I apply for a job with a local private university where he had designed a executive style program that needed someone to manage it. Because the organization was not particularly well run, things led to a rough patch in our relationship. I was put into the middle by my employer who had decided that Don, who was the lead faculty on the program, was "the problem." The real problem was the administration. There's more to it than that, but let that suffice.

Fast forward a couple of years and I ended up in another much better job, really getting my feet here finally, and I think I reached out. I was doing some research on the construction of identity in middle aged men and it occurred to me that Don would make a good interview. I think we were both about 59 and 60 respectively. He had survived a heart problem and I was just yet to get a cancer diagnosis. As ever, Don was fit and engaged, full of wit and great colleagueship.

We stayed in touch a bit more over the next few years. Had lunch a couple of times near his office at SPU. He invited me and a couple of other friends to be a panel for one of the evening MBA class he was teaching. I was pleased that he thought that well of my abilities and experience. It could easily have gone the other way after we had hit that rough patch, but he was a gracious man. The last time I saw him was at a breakfast he invited me to. It was one of those fill a hotel ballroom deals sponsored by SPU and featured the Governor, Susan Enfield (the interim School Superintendent), and Tavis Smiley as the main speaker. Don was a table captain.

I am beginning to understand why old people often read obituaries, and why I usually don't, though I am glad my wife pointed this one out. Reading about Don made me feel like a small piece of me died. It is as if my existence extends in this world through the physical bodies of the people I know and when one of them passes it is like observing a physical part of me disintegrating.

I have never felt exactly that way about the members of my family passing, with one notable exception, but almost always when it was someone I had made a personal connection with. That goes for the family member. He was the one who had put himself out to make a difference and with whom I had made a connection.

Kind of like a psychological version of Hansen's disease, watching parts drop off. I don't think I'm going to take up reading the obits. I will admit to being thankful that my wife does so that I didn't miss this one.

We are about to take off on a major adventure, traveling in Portugal, Spain, and France for six weeks. I had been resistant to the adventure my wife had suggested, but Don is proclaiming what a silly fool I would be not to go, and even if he's a year younger than me I'd better take his advice.