Help Me Remember These Two Lives? (32/365)

I don’t know when, but at some point, I started carrying names around in my pocket. Whenever a friend or colleague was experiencing a loss, I started writing the departed person’s name on a slip of paper and carrying it in my pocket. Reaching for my keys or a pen, my hand will touch the slip of paper, and I’ll pause for a moment and hold in my heart the a story about the person.

I can’t bring them back or erase the pain of loss, but I can carry their memories with me, spread the impact of their lives. It’s funny, I realize I rarely tell the person who’s experienced the loss most directly about my ritual.

This week is proving a bit hard for me. A few days ago, my friend and a force of nature Mary Billington died of cancer. She was thoughtful, brilliant, sarcastic, a light in the world, and a fierce advocate for public service and improving education. While we rarely got to see one another, Mary had a knack for sending out of the blue texts that led to long threads that felt like the warmest kind of hanging out on a couch or in a coffee shop. I will miss those chats, and I dread the first time I think, “I haven’t talked to Mary in a while…”

Mary wrote this a couple years ago. It’s beautiful and thoughtful and captures her voice wonderfully.

Mary leaving the world has been struggle enough.

You will never get to meet Brandon Williams. I got to teach Brandon at SLA. He was a heart, a mind, and a soul of beauty. He would wrestle with an idea, engage in a debate, and be open to changing his mind so long as the argument was strong enough. He could also dig his heels in and stubbornly hold on to an idea as strongly as anyone I’ve ever met. Some of my favorite memories of Brandon are of arguments inside and outside of class where something I or a peer said challenged his view on the world in ways he wasn’t ready to consider. Many’s the time I saw Brandon walk away knowing he was unsatisfied with the outcome.

He was never done with an idea, though. Without fail a day or two later, Brandon would be back, having mulled over the conversation, considered other points of view, surfaced new questions, and ready for consideration. SLA teachers often list our hopes for our graduates as them being thoughtful, wise, passionate, and kind. I will remember Brandon as all of these, and I will treasure most being witness to his constant path toward wisdom. The video below shows Brandon speaking at a community meeting for SLA. It is a testament to his light.

They never tell you your students will die before you do. I suppose we are simply to expect it as part of being in the world. Expecting and accepting are different.

If it’s not too much to ask, would you carry Mary and Brandon and their families with you for the next few days? They deserve to be with us and among us as long as we can hold to their memories.