"Brrrrrrr" ain't the word for the chill outside. My face was
pimpled by globs of small tear drops frozen to my cheeks. It was soon
that icicles hung from my leaking nostrils. I was getting a headache from
bumping into blocks of my frozen breath that floated in the air ahead of
me. Even a polar bear would wear gloves and earmuffs on this frozen south
Georgia tundra. What a time I picked to hit the streets again after I a
sprained toe I got fromtripping down a step kept me sidelined for the last
five weeks. Only a mile and a half this morning. While my body and mind
were fighting against nature's attempt at cryogenics, my spirit and soul
were kinda warmed by two cards I had received while I and my Susan were
traveling the cold and wet countryside of England's Wiltshire, Cornwall,
Devon, and Somerset.
I had gotten up at 3:30 this morning, still jet-lagging on English
time, brewed a pot of coffee, and had sat down to read and re-read those
two cards that I had brought home. There were each as compelling as
a Shakespearian soliloquoy.
These past weeks since Thanksgiving break at the end of November
have been a series of times when I have had to believe even though I
wasn't sure why I should. Seeming like an endless journey of sorrow, it
was a time, like Tom Paine wrote, that had tried my soul. There were
moments I think I knew exactly how Job felt. It was a time when
technology was not enough, when knowledge was not enough, when information
was not enough. It was a time when a friend of mine reminded me that maybe
I just had to have faith in faith.
Yesterday, I was in the office catching up on stuff and opening a
few pieces of snail mail. The contents of one envelope sent cold shivers
through my body. It was a funereal pictured program. It was sent by
Niteka's parents. It brought back hard memories. My eyes fixed on the
photograph and on the name: Niteka Wesby. They rode on an express lane
to my heart. I went limp and slumped down in my seat. The minute or so
passed like a lifetime. Niteka was never really far from me. Thoughts of
her popped up as I roamed the magnificance of the Wells cathedral, the
ruins of the great abbey in Glastonbury, and gazed as the inspiring
Winchester cathedral. Now, the events and feelings flooded back.
The chair in the back right corner had been empty that Monday
after the Thanksgiving break. I didn't know why. I wondered. She had
never missed a class. I asked the other members of her community. They
didn't know. Later that day came the fateful telephone call from Student
Affairs. Niteka was dead. I pulled up the Augusta newspaper on the
compurter. Killed a couple of days before Thanksgiving by a gangland
bullet in her small home town. Cut down at 18. Wiped off the screen.
She was an innocent in the wrong place at the wrong time. When a person
that young dies, it is almost as though more than one death has occurred.
That bullet didn't just tear through her back. It penetrated the hearts
of those who knew her. It tore a hole in the universe that would never
mend. It destroyed a piece of the future. And, there will be eternal
black hole where once there had been a shining star of life.
We had spoken more than once or twice. I had encouraged her when
I read in her journal of her self-doubts in spite of the honors she had
received in her small rural high school. She was becoming a leader in her
community. She had hugged me when we broke early for Thanksgiving and had
whispered her thanks that I had helped her start believing in herself and
that she belonged here. She was slowly adding value to herself and
lifting her lid to peek inside herself into her potential. And now, she
was gone.
I had called her parents. My palms sweated as I held the
receiver. My hand shook as I punched in the numbers. Listening first to
the cracking voice of her father and then her mother's was tough. I felt
so helpless. Everything I said sounded so trite. At that moment I almost
wish I was a distant, cold, disengaged lecturing professor. Had to tell
the others in the class. They took it hard. That was tougher because I
had to look into their stunned and saddened eyes. With tears rolling down
my cheeks, I slowly wrote the "words of the day" on the blackboard,
"Carpes Diem." We talked. With a cracking voice that betrayed by sorrow,
confusion, hurt, and anger, I reminded them, and myself, that this is the
only day we're promised. True. Still, at the time it sounded so
clinical, so matter-of-fact, so meaningless.
Then, by some fate, immediately after I had opened the envelop
from Niteka's parents, I slowly opened another envelope. It was plain,
not revealing the gift that lay within it. It was a Christmas card from a
student I'll call Sara. On the inside flap, under the cute Santa
Claus greeting, on to the back flap, and then on to a separate piece of
paper she wrote something that rivaled Dickens' Christmas Carol:
Dear Dr. Schmier:
I've been thinking and feeling a lot since classes ended. I've
been thinking about you. I've been thinking about Niteka. And
I've been thinking a lot about me. I hope you are having a happy
holiday. I know you weren't all that happy when classes ended.
Maybe I can help you smile.
You were right. I want you to know that I am making sure
that I am fighting for the first time in a long time to be happy
and that I am struggling hard, real hard, not to feel sorry for
myself and to like myself. I owe it to me to be happy not just to be alive
each day and breathe but to live and breathe life into each day.
Each day has to be not just a thanksgiving, but a thanksliving. I
never knew that. You and Niteka taught me that. Weird, huh?
You wrote CARPES DIEM on the board as the words of day when you told
us about Niteka's murder. I've never seen tears on a professor's face
when we talked and you said you didn't know why such things happen
and her stupid death was a time of testing.
Maybe this will help. Here is my Christmas gift to you. Those
tears washed away the doubts I had about your sincerity when we
talked all those times about my troubles with losing my mom and
feeling abandoned. I kept saying to myself, "yeah, yeah, yeah"
when you told me about feeling abandoned as a second son in your
family. I have to admit now that I was curious that you never
told me what to do like everyone else did. You just told me what you
did to find yourself and that it was possible for me to find a way if I
wanted to and had the courage to do it. It hit me a few days ago. It was
true. You really did care and that maybe I was worth caring about.
You really did believe about hope and love and belief and faith.
And that's why you refused to abandon me even though I kept abandoning
myself. You kept coming back to me time and time again even though I
didn't do anything to encourage you to think I was worth not being
abandoned again and I really screwed up the class. I'll let you
in on a secret. I did it on purpose to get you off my back, and
you gave me a change to clean up my mess.
Your class is a special place to learn about history and life and
ourselves altogether. It's a place where you are interested that
we become better persons not just better students. I want you to
know that a bunch of us did what you said you were going to do.
We hung around after you cancelled class and left the room.
We talked and thought about how some of us knew Niteka or wished
we had gotten to know her better. She always had a smile. Then we
got to talking about how each of us would spend our last day.
We gave each of us an assignment. We had to make up a list what
we would do if we knew that tomorrow wouldn't come for us. During
the next work day in class, we enchanged our lists. Boy, did I see
what some of the things you said to me meant. My life was so poor
and empty. I have so used the least rather than the most of my life.
There is so much living I could jam into each day. And yet so many of us
have gotten ourselves into so many jams, have been so petty on the
silliest things, concentrated on the least important things, and have
walked around a lot as if we were dead. Reading each other's list I saw
how much I could see and feel and do, and how blind and deaf and numb I
had been because of the stuff you and I talked a lot about. And we talked
about how and why we wait around and waste so much of each day. And you
know what? None of us wrote down stuff like climbing mountains, going on
a spending binge, going on some way off vacation, or going to the moon.
Most of what we wrote was just simple everyday stuff about laughing and
appreciating and thanking people and apologizing to people and doing for
people and calling people just say we loved them and watching the birds
and slowing down and feeling. It surprised the hell out of all of
us.
And it finally hit what you had been saying to me all semester.
Life is not fair. I have to deal with it, get over it, get on with it.
I can't decide whether shit happens, but I can choose whether to
walk in it or not. I think I see that I have to decide what to do
with my hurt and whether I let it weaken or strengthen me.
And like you told me over and over and over again, to live is to
both win and lose, to laugh and cry, to be happy and unhappy, to
taste the sweet and the sour. I hear you now. I'm not going to
let that past stuff destroy me like I was doing. I don't live a life.
I have to live a series of one days that add up to a life. So, every day
has to be like Christmas with its gift of a day. And I have to
give it all I have and do the best I can and do better the next
day and I have to help other people do the same. And if we can
live, like you wrote on the board, carpes diem, we'd have so much
more meaning to who we are and what we do.
I just finished watching Christmas Carol. I am like Scrooge. I have
been saying "bah, humbug" to life and myself for so long that
I had lost my spirit, and along comes the ghost of Niteka like
the fellow he worked with. I feel like I've been visited by all
those Christmas spirits. It's just oozing out of me. Niteka
gave a lot of us, at least me, the ultimate gift. I only
hope I can unwrap and use it each day and I don't lose this feeling.
No, I am not going to let this be just another stupid New Year's
resolution. This is going to be me like you said one inch at a
time, one step at a time, one day at a time. Now, I don't know where
all this is going to take me, and I am scared. I don't know if I
can do that. I won't know unless I try, huh? Like you did. And if
you could do it, why couldn't I. Right? I know now why you only
talked about yourself. It was an example of what I had in me
if I had to guts to look. But, I've got to face whatever things
may bring instead of running from then. I'm going to study like
hell, like I can do and got to do now. And, I am going to live
like hell. I want you to know that I've stopped with all this crap
and that I'm starting to get rid of crap I took inside me that I hid
behind so that I can start the long road to cleaning my body and
soul up. I'm warning you. If I get to thinking I can't do it
anymore and that I'm too tired to try, I'm going to come into your office
for a good kick in my ass and my spirit. Well, I'm going to pop
in whether I need that kick or now just to say hello.
Niteka gave me the gift of life with her life. And I am sorry it
cost her her life for the likes of me to find our lives, but I
don't think I would have seen or believed what you were saying
otherwise and I would have gone off the deep end. Hell, you
know I was thinking that I was a worthless piece of shit and
was thinking of flushing it down the toilet. Thankfully it
was only talk because I didn't have the guts to do it. Hell, \I
didn't even have the guts to live. Not now. No way.
No more being the coward in class or in life and blaming others.
Like you do in class when some of us really screw up and you still
find a reason to care about us and offer us hope, I have to do
that for myself now. Remember the picture, Private Ryan?
I am going to make Niteka's death count by making it give me
life.
Happy holidays. And like you tell us everyday, smile!
Renewed love of life, new found faith, better priorities, deeper
love for herself, greater sensitivity for others, wanting to share
precious insights that she had gained at such a high price. Good coming
from tragedy and pain. What a lesson! Am I ever smiling!
There's more. Sara's letter got me into some deep thinking. Not now. I'm
drained.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier [log in to unmask]
Department of History www.therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta State University www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html
Valdosta, GA 31698 /~\ /\ /\
912-333-5947 /^\ / \ / /~\ \ /~\__/\
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-_~ / "If you want to climb mountains, \ /^\
_ _ / don't practice on mole hills" - \____
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