One of the most difficult things I’ve done is to be involved in the medical care of a couple of my old teachers - one from high school and from junior high.
Talk about role reversal. The last time I had seen those individuals I was a long-haired freak and they were older and much, much wiser than I was. They essentially occupied a unique, unknowable, untouchable place in my mental landscape. The thought of engaging them in a “normal” conversation was something that would never have occurred to me. The thought of them depending on me, of trusting me with such grave and personal matters as their health, would have been utterly inconceivable.
Mr. Bancroft* was probably the best teacher I had ever had (and I had a lot of terrific ones). He was the one who had truly introduced me to the world of big ideas. To evolution, to life, to honest and deep scientific inquiry. And now, he had a cancer of the lymph glands. He refused to be called Mr. Bancroft and I was too uncomfortable to call him Paul. How to address him became one more source of anxiety for me.
He asked me for my opinion. He asked me to explain what was going on. He let me teach him and it was instantly clear that he trusted me. My anxiety level climbed from high to off-the-scale. I babbled and stuttered, started and then rephrased my attempts at answering his questions. That he trusted me notwithstanding my almost comical performance was, at once, both intensely gratifying and horribly unnerving.
He did well. I saw him off and on for several years until I left the city. I have no idea how he is now, or even if he ‘is’ now.
John Sinola* had scared the crap out of me ever since I first entered his history class in September of grade 8. He had been quite strict, but eminently fair. He did not suffer fools well at all (which, to put it mildly, left many of my classmates flustered and flummoxed). Ironically, like Paul Bancroft, he too had been one the seminal intellectual figures of my life. It was John who had demonstrated to me what being scholarly was. He was the first teacher who even intimated that what we were learning now was BS and that real knowledge and its acquisition, was something we better start preparing for.
When I saw him, by chance 25 years later, lying in a hospital bed, emaciated and cachectic, obviously dieing, I probably wouldn’t have even wanted (or dared) to say hello. But when he called out, “Karl? KarlGauss is that you?”, he had made my decision.
Although I was not his physician, he shared much with me (such is the power of the white coat to make disappear differences of age and disparity of roles). I soon learned that he had no one. He wasn’t married. His folks were dead. He was an only child, and, it soon became apparent, I was his only visitor.
I made of point of dropping by to see him every day, even if just for a few moments. At the risk of sounding self-congratulatory, it was obvious how much he enjoyed my little visits. He died when I was away for a summer break. I regret not having thanked him more for his teaching and not having thanked him at all for letting me join him from time to time in those most precious final days.
Since then, I’ve thought often of his bravery and his serenity. Of his acceptance without resignation. I’m pretty sure that he was still trying to teach me, but in the only way he had left - by example. And what an example he set.
*of course, the names are fictitious (but not the stories)
) and temporarily renewed the mommy awe in my daughters eyes. I think he’s nearing retirement age soon, and although he truly deserves the rest he will most assuredly be missed.