Mr. Martin's Final Lesson

I’ve wanted to write this post for several days now, but it’s been a struggle trying to figure out how to begin or exactly what I needed to say. It starts with this, I suppose: My friend Wendell, someone I had known and taught with for decades, has died.

He retired a couple of years ago. I didn't see him very often after that; sometimes lives veer off in different directions. We’d be in touch occasionally to catch up, but it was never anything like it had been when we were in the same building every day. I know I’ll carry residual guilt about that for awhile, and I hope someday I’ll find a way to reconcile it. But I was privileged enough to visit with him in his final days, and he knew I was there. I’ll always be grateful for that. 

Even though the news of his passing wasn’t unexpected in the end, actually knowing he was gone still affected me. More than one of my evenings in the following days was spent at home with all the lights off, listening to blaring and pounding music to block out my capacity to think. I bounced back and forth between binge-watching TV shows or getting lost in any number of books so I could mentally be somewhere else. I examined my own life in the cold spotlight of proximate mortality, second-guessing the decisions and indecisions that have led me to the life I’ve made and the person I am, for better or worse, and usually finding ways to feed the worse. I was early to bed, trying to escape having to think or feel, and then early to rise, to avoid lying in bed and overthinking myself into a downward spiral before the day even began. 

But I knew all of this was wrong. Even as I grieved for my friend in such self-indulgent ways, I could hear the concern that would be in his voice if he were here telling me not to beat myself up this way. I knew it wasn’t how he’d want to be remembered, so I had to fight it off. I needed better ways to serve his memory.

I think a step in that process is letting people know about him. I could list hundreds of vivid memories I shared with him, both at school and away from it, things that would provide telling examples of the man he was for those who didn’t know him and would reinforce the idea of him for those who did.

*When my sister was sick and dying, Wendell and his wife Ruth invited me to dinner at their home on a Friday night, saying they’d rather see me having a home-cooked meal with them instead of going home to start my weekend alone and staring at the walls. I brought a movie to watch and brought my dog Spencer to play with their dog Penny while we ate and talked and decompressed. This evolved into our regular Friday night routine for over a year and a half. In my time of greatest need, this simple gesture provided the exact respite I craved.

*We had once kept a running joke going for years when we told dozens of students that I lived in the basement of his house. We sold it so convincingly it would not surprise me if, to this very day, there were still former students out there unsure of the truth. 

*When he made the difficult decision to take a year of medical leave, I gathered as many people as I could to help pack up his classroom since he couldn’t do it himself. More than a dozen volunteers came together and boxed up everything he had, which I kept in storage in my garage for a year until he was ready to reclaim it and return to school. Being able to earn clearance from his doctors to go back to teaching after that year off was the main thing that motivated him to get better. In the end he reached that goal. 

*When a student gave me a pair of Timberwolves tickets for Christmas one year, I brought him to the game.

*He was a Harry Potter fanatic, having read and listened to all of the books several times over, to say nothing of seeing the movies. When my oldest nephew and I twice waited in line at the bookstore to buy the last two books in the series, Wendell and Ruth were right there in line with us. 

My experiences with him barely scratch the surface of all that made up the rest of his life: His time spent in the Navy working on submarines. His love for fishing. The truly amazing number of skip days he took when he was in high school. The fact that he could make one hell of a homemade cheesecake. How he was more concerned about Ruth than himself when he knew his time was running short. 

To any of his students who might read this someday: You were everything to him. You were never just data points buried in standardized test results, or alphabetized names listed on any number of blindingly redundant spreadsheets. You were his life’s work. You were the reason he spent so much time building the science fair into such an event. He gave so many of you nicknames to show some humorous affection because he wanted you to feel included. He voluntarily stayed after school to help so many of you individually because he wanted to see you succeed, and he wanted you to know he believed you could. He went to so many of your games and recitals and events to demonstrate how important you were.

When I’m left wondering what would he do in this situation, if our roles were reversed and I had been the one to die too early, the answer always comes easily: He would own his loss, accept how things were and let it become a part of his life, then make peace with it and continue his work, likely with a renewed sense of purpose. He’d feel his sadness, share it when appropriate, but would never complain. Because regardless of any issues or problems he had that would have given him just cause to complain, he never did. He was unfailingly positive.

Even though he was able to end his career on his terms, something which was immeasurably important to him, he would still be teaching in a perfect world. This thing, this job, this career that meant so much to him, was something I had the chance to do today, and will have the chance to do again when the weekend is over. As frustrating as so many things about the job are, and believe me when I say that is absolutely not a short list, I need to look for how I can carry on the importance he saw, and find ways to fill the holes his absence leaves behind. 

If I learned anything from the time my life intersected with Wendell Martin’s, it would be how much simple kindness can matter, and the difference it can make in the lives of people to know they have someone who values who they are.