A Teacher
It’s been about five months since my diagnosis in the fall of 2016, and hardly anyone knows. I’m still preoccupied with living into an uncertain future as a 48-year-old man with young onset Parkinson’s disease, still living in the chronic illness closet walled off by fear and anxiety, sadness and despair.
It’s a Sunday afternoon when Norton calls me at home. We’re colleagues in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin, and he is teaching a course titled Loss and Grief. Undergoing treatment for cancer, an illness he’d experienced a couple of times before, he had not felt well for weeks, since the semester began, in fact; and he was finding it more difficult to walk and to maintain his energy for a weekly three hour course.
Before the semester began, I told Norton that I would be ready to assist him if he ever needed the support, and I meant it. I had taught a similar course in previous semesters and was willing to step-in at any point. My hope was that the offer would help ease his anxiety about any need to miss class.
No faculty colleague was more conscientious than Norton.
His phone call comes as no surprise. A few days earlier, I saw his wife, Marilyn, who is also a professor in the School of Social Work, and speaking about Norton’s decline, she expressed concern about his ability to continue the teaching pace.
Norton tells me that he doesn’t think he can teach on Tuesday and asks if I can cover the class. “I’m planning to be back the following week,” he says, “you’re not finished with me yet.”
I tell him I’m happy to fill-in for him on Tuesday, and to fill-in for him as long as he needs me. We spend a few more minutes going through what he has planned to cover in class that day.
I meet with his class that Tuesday and for the next couple of weeks. Because his health continues to decline, Norton and I then meet at his home and discuss a plan for me to serve as the course instructor for the rest of the semester. We speak at length about his approach to the course and about what he wants students to learn, which I want to honor. At one point in our conversation, he pauses, clears his throat, and says, “I wish I could tell them goodbye.”
I think for a moment, and then suggest that we video conference him in to class the next time it meets, so that he can say goodbye and his students can say goodbye to him.
“I’d like that,” he says.
Learners
A few days later, we gather for class. The students and I talk about the plan for the day and then have a few minutes before the video conference with Norton begins.
The room becomes silent. Being in their late teens and early twenties, few of these students have come face-to-face with any person in hospice care, let alone with a teacher in that situation. No one makes eye contact with me as I scan the room.
Then, Norton’s face appears on the large screen at the front of the classroom.
He begins leading his class one last time.
With his beloved wife by his side, Norton lies at home in a hospice bed, his head propped up by pillows. Despite his soft scratchy voice, he speaks with deft strength and elegance. As his reassuring tone and winsome spirit take hold, his students relax and listen intently. Several have tears spilling over their young cheekbones.
He greets us and speaks of his sadness over not being able to complete the semester, and of how important teaching in the School of Social Work has been to him. He also notes the irony of his course being on loss and grief, adding, as he chuckles, that he is still trying to figure out who to be mad at about that.
Then he uses his own experience of knowing that the end of his life is drawing nearer to make multiple connections with what he and the students have read, discussed, and wrote about the previous seven or eight weeks.
He teaches us about loss and grief.
Lessons
I learn other lessons from him, too.
Each of us has purpose for as long as we live. Norton discovered social work education later in life, after a career practicing law; and he remained curious and open to new ideas and experiences. By his own account, he never stopped learning or growing.
We say as much about ourselves and about our take on life with our attitudes and personal commitments as we say with our mouths. Even as his health declined and his energy waned Norton cared about human suffering, his students, and his commitment to equipping them for work that helps people heal.
We are most human when we are most authentic and vulnerable. Speaking to his students from a hospice bed required a level of courage, self-acceptance, and inner strength that continues to inspire me. What a gift he gave those of us there that day. What an example he provided for us to emulate as we live out our own callings, take our own risks, and share our own gifts with others.
When Norton finishes, we have the opportunity to speak to him, each in our own way.
All of us express gratitude, for him and for his teaching. The students voice appreciation for the time they shared. I acknowledge his important contributions to the life and mission of our school, as well as to the social work profession. We reminisce for a brief moment more.
As our time together ends, his students wave to him, with tears again running down their faces. He slowly lifts his arm to wave back as he smiles.
“Take care of yourselves, and thank you,” he says.
Wiping my own eyes, I, like Norton, want to be mad at someone. But this anger fades as my gratitude takes a firmer hold.
Because even though death looms, life keeps pushing it away.
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Allan Cole is a professor in The Steve Hicks School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin and, by courtesy, professor of psychiatry in the Dell Medical School. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2016, at the age of 48, he serves on the Board of Directors at Power for Parkinson’s, a non-profit organization that provides free exercise, dance, and singing classes for people living with Parkinson’s disease in Central Texas, and globally via instructional videos. He also serves as a Community Advocate for ParkinsonsDisease.net, writing columns about living well with Parkinson’s. He is author or editor of 10 books on a range of topics related to bereavement, anxiety, and spirituality. Currently, he is writing a book on counseling people with Parkinson’s disease, which will be published by Oxford University Press. Follow him on Twitter @PDWise.