This issue marks my return from a short bereavement leave. A month ago the friends, students, and colleagues of my wife, Sandra, deluged her with calls and messages about what she had meant to them. In what she realized was the last week of her life, she allowed a colleague at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville to divulge the seriousness of her condition, and word spread around the world with the speed of e-mail. I received those messages and read them to her.
San was too busy doing her work to spend any time wondering what effect she had on people. She knew she was effective, she knew her students loved her, and I think she knew that by going to work on their behalf, despite the visible loss of energy and weight, she would send a message about what it means to be a steward of people.
I took her sacrifice for granted and threw my energy behind her desire to live every minute as the teacher and mentor she had always been, until she ran out of life. Since her condition was incurable, there was no point in saving her energy for later. There wouldn't be a "later" for her. There was, and is, only a "now."
The humanities fields are cultivated by teachers and mentors who share that same sense of mission San did. They are called to be stewards of people. In my blog of July 18 I gathered up excerpts from a few of the messages to her so that you could see her as they did, and mourn the loss of her with me.
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