Suddenly it is fall in New Hampshire. Here, Ginny, I know, is where you loved to hike and climb mountains with your family. I think of you as I walk through a sports store in Concord, for above the displays of kayaks and cross-country skiing equipment a television plays a film of rock climbers - hands and muscles stretching for holds, sun arcing over camera, a sky of infinite blue.
You told me more than once that I should do the climbing: I told you I would go with you only if there were an elevator handy. This was a game we played, and it is your laughter I will miss most -- a sound of joy, quick delight.
Someone once said that an aristocrat makes anyone feel at home. This is why you were a great and noble <$>teacher. For I saw how your students came to you in our office: they knew <$>how much you wanted them to learn, how interested you were in their lives. They laughed with you and you had a look of pride and admiration on your face -- these students were, after all, also your family. So now they come to me, to our office: one sings me a song he wrote for you. New students of mine who once sat in your classes tell me of their disbelief -- how can it be that someone so full of laughter and life can go so suddenly, in such a traumatic way? It is too much for them, and I can offer very little to explain it.
I am driving home from Concord then, away from the bustle of shoppers. Route 89 is darkening, the trees along the sides of the highway indistinct shapes. But the sky is extraordinary. Pink and red and blue -- sweeps of color from a gigantic brush. I feel small beneath this majesty. I can tell our students this: you are in these mountains that you loved, you are in this rolling wild sky, you can see clear down the Merrimack Valley to Massachusetts. A little later, a folk song comes on the radio. It goes:
So long, see you tomorrow
In a morning free from sorrow
Where forgiving winds blow
The clouds from the rainbow
So long, see you tomorrow
So long, dear Ginny. What an honor it has been, for all of us at Tufts, to have known and loved you.
Joseph Hurka
Lecturer in English
