Right after this past Thanksgiving, we had a Kendrick family reunion. Four generations of loud, opinionated people who all feel compelled to opine at the same time all under one roof. A 48-hour non-stop affair of conversationus interruptus.
Aside from being loud, we also share a love love of dogs, and there were plenty of them here at weekend. I have a sizable backyard which is a dog’s dream come true. Plenty of live oaks and a line of small decorative limestone boulders to pee on, a place to mark with their own unique scent that let’s other canine’s know “Hey! I was here!”
In subsequent days, my dog Bixby’s keen doggy olfactory sense let me know those dogs must have marked the entire backyard. But he soon reclaimed his canine kingdom.
It’s easy for dogs. Pop a squat or lift a leg and voila!! Urine-inspired immortality.
And then earlier this evening, I watched an episode of the Twilight Zone featuring a beloved teacher at a prestigious all boy’s prep school, somewhere in the Northeast who was asked to retire after 30 years of teaching. He didn’t feel ready to hand in the mortar board. He not only felt he had more time left to teach, he wondered if he’d done anything to inspire, to motivate his pupils.
He doesn’t take the news well, and argued the point with the headmaster. In his despair, ge grabbed a gun with plans to respond to this insult at the foot of a nearby statue….of one of his literary idols, Horace Mann. Then just about as pulls the trigger, he hears school bells. This is odd because it’s after hours, the bells shouldn’t be ringing. He investigates by entering his now former classroom. It’s dark at first, then as the room fills with light, we see young men, dressed in period clothing from his past 30-years as a teacher.
He sits at the desk, then slowly realizes he recognizes each man. They are the ghosts of many young men he once taught, then died soon after.. They approached the desk, re-introduced themselves, including the years they graduated and tell him about the lessons they learned from him in their short lives.
One told the professor he died from leukemia due to radiation exposure while working on cancer research. As he was losing the battle with his illness, he kept remembering quotes the teacher had taught him. Quotes that helped him make sense of his life, but also helped him better understand it’s ending.
Another student reminded the instructor he had died at Iwo Jima while helping save a platoon of soldiers. He’d won the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously, but added that he shared the honor with his former teacher, who taught him about bravery and courage.
One spoke about dying on board the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, as he rescued 12 sailors stuck in the boiler room as the gravely damaged ship was sinking. He told the professor that facing death was made easier that day because of a poem he’d been taught in class. A now famous poem written by John Donne:
…..”any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls ; it tolls for thee”…
They then tell the professor how grateful they were that he had instilled something in them, long after they left prep school. Each of them carried with them something he’d given them, courage, dignity, integrity. .
They disappear just as the bells toll again. He puts his head in his hands, moved to tears…
And scene.
It’s the next day. His experience from the night before was a miracle. He then tells the headmaster that he will accept the forced retirement citing he believes that actually might have actually made a difference in his students’ lives and while there were many who made tremendous sacrifices to make victory possible, in the end, he felt he’d played a small part in every victory won.
He’ll die knowing all those long days at the chalkboard, cramming Tennyson, Keats, and Byron down their throats, weren’t in vain.
But this was an episode from The Twilight Zone, not real life. Most people die before knowing they’d made a difference somewhere in someone’s life. Most people will die before telling someone about the impact he or she made on their lives. I think that’s the most egregious part of the cycle of life and death….not telling people of their worth while there’s still time to do so. That’s how I’d like to exit this mortal coil….knowing what I’d done or didn’t do to for another human being. One life tentacles out to affect the lives of so many others. Didn’t Clarence Odbody, Angel 2nd class teach us anything????
Each day that goes by, is one less day I’ll have to tell someone how indebted I am to them. How their actions, big or small, or their words, filled with painful truths or sweet and gentle, and calming made a difference.
Well, my ADT home security guy is coming by this afternoon to update my system. I’ll be hearing a lot of bells then, and considering what Donne meant by the tolling bells (a church marking the start of a funeral service in Elizabethan England), I don’t want to hear any toll prematurely for me. So, I’m going to increase my odds and say some things that must be both said and heard.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have phone calls to make.
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