I’d been wondering how I would find out that one of my strongest mentors had passed away, so it wasn’t that much of a surprise to find this email preview on my phone early this morning: “News about Sue Ellen: Rick, Sorry to share sad news but wanted to le–“. I got in the shower, allowing the truncated first line to resonate with me until I was outside, as the car warmed up this bitter November morning.
Sad News
Sunday afternoon, one week prior to this email, my wife and I were watching a football game, each augmenting the experience with a mobile device, or two. At one point she looked up from her personalized window to the world and exclaimed with sadness “Sue Ellen is on hospice.” I felt her gaze linger an extra beat as she registered my reaction. We don’t follow the exact same people and organizations on social media, and I had not come upon that information myself. After briefly discovering who had reported the information, and accepting it as truth, I didn’t say much more. I checked my own sources, and was only able to find that well-wishes were already being posted on Sue Ellen’s wall. I collected my thoughts. I felt compelled to say something, but what? It seemed unlikely that she would be reading and writing at that moment, but maybe there was a chance that someone holding her hand would browse her feed and select particular sentiments to read when she felt up to it. I wrote something brief indicating that when we worked together (I as her support staff) I may not have been leading as she was, but that my eyes were open, and now that I am leading my own choir, I use those observations on a weekly basis. That’s what was on my heart, and seemed to me more relevant than the sadness I was feeling.
I’d planned to attend a choral concert at a university a mile or two from my home that evening. My wife was not planning to attend. It seemed odd in a way to get up and head out into the darkness when I was feeling such darkness in my soul, but I knew it was something I wanted to do, a distraction at worst, cathartic at best.
It’s customary for me to arrive at a concert, choose my preferred seat and pore over the printed materials I collected on the way in. I’ll read the program order, the biographies, the rosters, in the event I might know someone on stage. If I’ve picked up calendars in the hallway, I’ll read through them as well, thinking of future dates that might be of interest.
That night was different. I got my concert program, but tucked it away immediately. I’ve been working hard on being in the moment, being present, and not focusing on what lies ahead. I have a very large body of music in my head, as one would expect of a person with nearly three decades of serious music involvement, and it’s an exciting game to look at concert schedules with an eye to seeing what percentage of the pieces featured are already familiar to me. I enjoy the anticipation of opening the booklet for the first time, and the anticipation that builds as I await each upcoming piece on the program.
And that evening, as this plan first came into mind, as I reflected on the day’s news, my ongoing project of changing how I interact with the world, and the choral risers, soloist chair, harp, and auxiliary percussion onstage, I felt compelled to live in wonder for a moment. I realized that knowing the pieces on a program also lead me to know the approximate length of the program, the approximate time that I’ll be back home in pajamas. What finer way to live in the present than to not even know how long I’d be sitting in that chair?
The chorus came out, the instrumentalists joined, and my suspicions were confirmed when the soloist chair was filled by a tiny boy. Even before the first notes, I knew we wouldn’t need him till the second movement. Without introduction from the podium, the first crashing measures of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms led me to a world I sorely needed at that moment in time.
As that concert progressed, I was taken through all the seasons of my musical life. Scenes inspired by college and first singing with my wife, by working with Sue Ellen at Nassau Church, by my own church choir. It was an uplifting experience, a truly special evening. I kept her in my mind throughout the performance.
Find a Way to Tell Them
I make it a point, in my present self, to tell people how much they mean to me. I grew up in a household that, in spite of loving gestures, rarely used the phrase “I love you”, and never, ever, not once, would hug on departures and arrivals. That shocked my wife when she first joined up with us. Conversely, I was severely put out at her family gatherings when coming and going each would add ten minutes as you hug and kiss everyone. I couldn’t stand it for many reasons. I’ve changed in the intervening fifteen years, and even gotten a few in my camp to make changes too. I am more physically affectionate with hugs for people that mean a lot to me, and in some environments that is just what is needed. I can’t leave church on a Sunday morning without ensuring I’ve gotten a handful of hugs from key people whom I love.
But, there are too many environments where it is fully expected to be fairly cold to one another. I make it a point to give people that reciprocal boost when I feel uplifted by them myself. “Thank you for singing with us.” “I really admire the way you work with our students.” These simple gestures do matter. It took a while for me to learn that.
I bring this up here because I hadn’t mastered caring when I knew Sue Ellen in person. I know that I never thanked her for the wisdom I was absorbing any time I had the chance to sit in her office and chat, the professional knowledge I learned as I watched her work and helped her prepare a full season of music in August. As I have learned more about myself and begun to see these values develop, I have written her. I remember that she was the first person I wrote when I finally got a job as a church musician. And I know that she is the primary reason I have developed into a church musician who cares more about people than notes on the page. She might have known the impact she had had on me. But that’s just it. In our small choral world, she was a celebrity, a titan in fact. She had that same impact on hundreds of people through the decades. Of what value could a gesture from me have on someone like that?
I don’t know, and won’t know unless I too become a titan someday. But, as a regular person who tries to do good for people, the occasional card or online message do matter to me. I’ve kept many of them, and refer to them when it feels right, “as needed”. I think we sometimes assume that our proximity to a person gives us more of a responsibility to express our true feelings. I couldn’t sleep at night if I hadn’t told my wife how much she meant to me that day. Yet, I went to sleep for over ten thousand nights without ever even trying to tell Sir Neville Marriner that his soundtrack to the movie Amadeus led me down a hole whose walls were too slippery to ever let me out. Literally the second I learned of his death I thought “it’s too late, I can never tell him now” that he, more than anyone I know in person, had shaped who I am and forever will be. But now, it’s too late.
I had no idea where this post would go when I started. I just knew that I had to write something. As I prepared this morning for my day, my mind danced with visions of Nassau Church, Sue Ellen’s office, her wide collection of Orff instruments, and chorister lanyards with beads of achievement strung on them. I thought of my first lunch meeting with her, and of her star-studded rolodex that I eventually entered into the computer for her. People of all walks of life will recollect such things this week, and I hope they have a broad smile in so doing.
For me, I’m fascinated that the facets of this experience have yet again revealed to me the themes I’ve struggled with in recent years. Did Sue Ellen know how much she meant to that twenty-something admin, struggling to find his way in the world? Possibly, but probably not. But there’s nothing I can do about that guy, sadly. If we’d met up nowadays and formed that relationship, would she be made aware? Almost certainly. Sue Ellen, after all, was a vital link in the chain that bridged these two generations of me. I wouldn’t even be equipped to write a post like this or maintain a site with this mission, had I not been influenced by people like her in this scene of my life story.
We spend so much time destructively regretful over the past, without realizing that the only reason those regrets have formed is because our past and present selves are out of alignment. We can’t change who we were. But often times, a forced reflection to a previous time can be the affirming check we need that progress is happening.