Jerry

A brief audio excerpt from Jerry’s eulogy, which follows in its entirety.

Today I’m going to talk about what you could call Fate. I want to celebrate my good fortune — how I was lucky enough to meet Grace and have this wonderful life with her.

Okay, let me start again. First, I wanted to thank all of you for coming. Some even from very far away — not just family from Utah, Tucson, Seattle, New York, Norway and distant parts of California — but also Eileen from Singapore, Georgeanne from South Carolina, Elliot & Rachel from Baltimore, Gerry & Grace from New York — also known as “the other Gerry & Grace” — Tricia from Utah, and people from other states like Southern California, even people from the East Bay.

Grace is famous for her “positive attitude” in the face of all her trials and difficulties.  But of course it’s been your care and your love for Grace that did a great deal — definitely more than you know — to sustain her and keep up that attitude. And, somehow, there were a lot of you who helped her. And people wanted to help her. That’s the kind of person she was.

And now I have to thank you again for helping to sustain me And to keep me from believing all my self-blaming and even half-crazy ideas. For a few weeks after Grace died I was like extra-extra devastated because I was afraid she didn’t know — or I hadn’t made clear — since she couldn’t speak — how devoted I was to her. And the biggest part of what saved me then, was the passionate testimony of many of you who are here today.

And eventually I had a slightly cooler brain and even I knew the truth.

And then I came to a point where I felt — and often still feel — that I failed to appreciate fully the time when Grace and I were both alive.

  • That if I knew what I know now, I would have been thrilled and jumping for joy at every single moment that we had together.
  • And on top of that, here I’m someone who claims he’s devoted his life to trying to be awake and, supposedly — presumptuously I think now — trying to impart to others what I’d learned so that they could be more awake.
  • I mean, I thought that was what my writing and my teaching was supposed to do. So how do I deal with the fact that, in the most important trial of all, I failed to grasp my own advice?
  • So, some of my time and my energy I’ve spent punishing myself for this failure and dullness and stupidity.

Well, again, thank you for your unexpected help.

  • Again, without having Grace’s live help and wisdom, it was your help and wisdom, beyond the call of duty or mere friendship, your help that helped me keep my nose above water. And finally, even my chin.
  • To me there’s nothing more powerful than unexpected help.

Thank you.

And while I’m thanking people, I also need to thank all my helpers with this Memorial, without whom today’s event would have been impossible:
Nik, Raja, Bill Melcher, Richard, Lisa, Elliot and Rachel, and of course Bobbie and her staff; and still others who contributed and then had to go back to Indiana, or Buffalo, or Tucson, or Baltimore.

A wise not-very-old man once told me, “A relationship is not a life. A relationship is part of a life.”

  • I consider that good and solid guidance.
  • (You all remember that, especially you young people.)

But with Grace, for Grace and me… Well, the wise not-very-old man’s advice turned out not to fit entirely.

  • Grace and I had a whole universe to ourselves.
  • Of course we had critically important other relationships — with family members and our closest friends — we had other achievements, other duties.
  • But… Well, somehow we might have been an exception.
  • For us, somehow, being at the center of each other’s daily lives and, really, emotional lives… That worked.

Most of you probably read the following in the notice I sent out toward Thanksgiving (I quote):

It often seemed that we were somehow “created for each other,” to enhance and revolutionize each other’s lives, as though “larger forces” had insisted to crush every obstacle and bring us together and now won’t let what happened be forgotten.

The “lighter” part of my talk is about how some of these “larger forces” created enough luck for us to stay on course to meet each other on Friday the 13th of Sept. 1991.

Now it may be that “Fate” had determined to bring us to a certain cubicle corner to meet in Baltimore on that date. But Fate had a whole flotilla of conditions. Maybe thousands of ‘em.

1.        Invent airplanes (They can’t meet unless we invent airplanes. A hundred years ago we wouldn’t have met.)

But to save time I’m going to forget about these “conditions” and stick to these “larger forces” that facilitated what Fate wanted. Here’s one of our more hairbreadth escapes:

1987. [PROP 1: Poster “1987”]

  • I applied for a teaching job at Towson State University in tech writing and gave the best presentation of my life.
  • Two weeks later the chairman called me into his office and told me that out of the 300 applicants I was their first choice.
  • But, with only 2 women in a department of 46, they needed to hire their second choice.
  • I completely agreed.
  • And years later I gave thanks to the power of the Women’s Movement, because without it Grace and I would absolutely never have met!
  • (There’s “Larger Force” No. 1.)

1970. [PROP 2: Poster “1970”]

  • More complicated case: Sir Geo. Williams, the No. 2 English speaking university in Montréal, wanted to hire me in 1970. And I would be happy to accept the job, I had family there and I liked Montreal.

But it was the year the Quebec Separatists came into prominence, and a militant organization kidnapped and later killed a government minister.

  • To help cool the anti-English agitation, the government held up Sir George Williams’ budget and in the end cut it way back — and finally there was no position to fill.
  • Neither Grace nor I had any direct or indirect involvement with the Separatists and surely did not agree with what those militants were doing.
  • But without them and without their bad behavior — we would absolutely never have met.
  • No chance.  Everything disappears — all lost — blank screen…
  • They weren’t thinking of Grace & Jerry when they did it, but their bad behavior saved us. They kept us on track to meet. And I’m grateful for the unintended benefit that we got.

So: We were fated and on track to meet, the most important meeting of my life,

  • but there were these repeated threats to derail us — derail us, and just like that, deprive us of even the years we did have together. For me that would be to lose the most precious thing I still own.
  • So I’m grateful at the wonder of how — every time — these “larger forces” thwarted the threats, protected us and, thank God, we were saved.

1969-75. [PROP 3: Poster “1969-75”]

My stepdaughter Marianne, when she was 26, had the courage to move to Norway, where she still lives.  When I was 25 or 26, why didn’t I move to Europe?  Wasn’t the time ripe for that?

That would have been the end of Grace and Jerry.  All gone.

What saved us?

For saving us I have to thank my ignorance and failure of courage — my sensitivity was dialed down so low that the idea of a move like that was never something I would take seriously.

And I thank the civil rights/anti-war/youth movement of the Sixties: I had hope for this country. (Even now I still have a certain amount of this kind of hope.) But I thank my patience, my naïve patience, my faith, for believing that this hope was real — and this hope, combined with my ignorance and failure of courage, helped keep me here and keep me on track to meet Grace in Baltimore in 1991.

Fast forward to 1991.  [PROP 4:  Poster 1991]

This time I have to give thanks to the business higher-ups for their reliably idiotic decisions. This story I’ll tell more completely because it shows how I did finally meet Grace.

Back in Baltimore I’d taken this job as a tech writer at Becton Dickinson in January 1991. And in late August these business higher-ups, in their wisdom, decided we tech writers should be separated from the engineers that we worked with every day and moved up to the 2nd floor. Of course that would complicate our lives and make us less efficient and less comfortable… so we decided to fight. (Something I did know how to do.)

But a couple of weeks later, in short, we lost. And on a Tuesday, we were moved to our new, foreign cubicles upstairs. It was Sept. 10th.  I learned that in this area on this new floor there was a breakfast club on Fridays and I immediately joined.

And at 9 a.m. on Friday the 13th I saw a Chinese-looking woman I’d never seen before delicately handling a bagel as though she’d never known such a thing could exist.

Well, I always had a meeting at 9 o’clock Fridays and I was dragged away after about 6o seconds. But in a quick 60 second conversation I learned that she was going back to Singapore in 10 days, that she was this incredibly open person, that she was no pushover — by which I mean she had her values and the self-confidence to stand with them — and she was attractive and appealing. I made a mental note to absolutely follow up on this woman.

So that was my chance, right? Fate was happy, right? That was my chance that the Women’s Movement and Quebec separatists and the social ferment of the 1960s and the idiotic business higher-ups over all these years concocted to keep us on track to meet on that day.  Fate?  Just needed to follow up on having met this woman, right?  And what happened?  I forgot all about that meeting.

So, after all that help from all these “larger forces,” who was there left to save us this time?

  • Well, some more senior branch of these “larger forces” had to step in, and so I now have to thank them.
  • It turns out that some kind of Providence (and some non-higherups) had long ago declared that the very next day, a Saturday, the 14th, was the annual company picnic.
  • Thank God!

Half of you have probably heard that story of my further foolishness…

Big Poster Photo of BD Picnic. [PROP 5.]  (“My last prop”)

Here’s the first photo of Grace and me. (Don’t know who took it.) There’s Grace, whose name I hadn’t remembered. This is Susan, who was responsible for taking Grace around and who I knew quite well. This arrogant-looking guy is me. This guy is a work-friend who owned a boat and invited Grace for a ride but the weather canceled that.

As you see I hadn’t asked Grace to sit down. Deliberately. Kept talking to her but never asked her to sit down. Why?

I was judging by women and girls bred and brainwashed in the United States: If you asked them if they wanted to sit down there was a good chance they’d decline and say they were going to get a drink — because they didn’t want it to be understood that they were showing interest in you.

Well, for a woman who grew up in Singapore all I was doing was being rude and acting like a boor.

But you all know Grace.  So after a long enough time she said, “Would you please scoot over so I can sit down?”

Anyway, we had 3 separate long talks at that picnic. In the second talk I learned that her husband Tom had died only a year and half before — after a brain tumor, a surgery and a long difficult struggle. I was moved, and I remember saying to her, “Wow, they really put you through the meatgrinder.” Of course by now — 20 years later — she and all of us have been through a bunch of meatgrinders.

Did I get anything right? Yes! It’s one thing I unquestionably know I got right in my life. I’d learned something previously: I recognized that this was a beautiful human being and meeting her was a crossroads and a life-changing moment.

  • Someone with that much openness,
  • that much solidity with her values and bounce-back from all those those dark-side blows — and there were many more to come —
  • someone with that much friendliness and humor,
  • someone whose beauty would shine through all the business and bureaucratic nonsense that tries to suffocate us — that was Grace.

And without the Women’s Movement, etc., etc., etc. and without the reliably misguided decisions of the company higher-ups — and without the intervention of their elder brother Providence — I would never have had the chance to make that one right decision — and finally to stand here today so devastated and so grateful for having had that opportunity.

(One more thing.) Grace was too good to be true. I’m glad I told her that quite a few times, though it wasn’t near enough.

After we met, she and I were still living half a world apart for a year and we wrote all these great letters to each other. Over these last two months I read all these 20-year-old letters that I had and just few days ago I finished them.

I’d like to conclude with an excerpt from the last letter that I found, which happened to be one that I wrote to her in March 1993. I’d been living in Singapore with her and the family a few months, but the week that I wrote these words she was doing training and tech support in South Korea.

I said:

… It could look as though the risks, trials, failures, blind alleys and successes of my life were all preparation… Preparation culminating in one supreme moment — when you passed so briefly across my screen, flickered past me and disappeared.…

So I celebrate my luck in finding you, my patience and discrimination in not settling for anyone before I found you, and my swift recognition, once you’d appeared, of what was real: that any further hesitation would be inappropriate, disastrous, tragic; that it was the end of waiting, of dreaming; that the moment for action, the moment of truth, had come…