December 15, 2024 - What will you DO?

The Dean of our Cathedral is leaving us soon. We all fervently wish him well, and we are dealing with the looming goodbye. Some of us are determinedly saying “New Beginnings for Him, New Beginnings for Us,” while others are, you know, sighing.  Both of which are perfectly okay.

Me, I keep identifying with things, a little Life in Review, even though this, like so many other things, is actually Not About Me.  

For instance, Nathan gives terrific sermons, beautifully crafted and layered, often both funny and deep. When he announced his departure, he said that he had reached a point where he was constantly looking at his life and interactions as sermon-fodder.

I flashed back to Daily Themes, an ancient* and terrifying writing class I took sophomore year. We had to write a scene from a story, preferably dialogue, every weekday, for a semester. I took it partly for the thrill, but mainly because my boyfriend said I would never make it. And I ran out of ideas pretty swiftly, and started using anything at all, conversations overheard, other people’s lives, anything. Fodder!

I have also mused about Friends vs Work Friends (or Church Friends, Choir Friends, Organized Activity friends). A wise man, now a friend but once a work friend, says the difference lies in whether you spend time with the person away from work (or work-like group). The Dean and I have never gone for coffee, but even if we had, I’ve discovered that you don’t know if someone will be a non-work friend until you stop working with them.

Mostly, though, I’ve been thinking about the weeks between when I announced my retirement, and my last day. People had opinions! More than one said, “You can’t retire! I’m too young!”**

I agreed. A lot of folks wanted to discuss our finances, and I learned to say, “We talked to a guy. Then we talked to two more guys. You should talk to a guy!”

The most common response, though, was, “What will you DO?” not in a curious way, exactly, but more in concern.

The honest answer was that I loved not knowing. I had never in my memory not had SOMETHING I had to do. I wanted to wait and see. I also wanted, very specifically, to be unable to say, “Oh, I can’t, I have to….”  What would that be like?

But people didn’t love hearing “I don’t know!” So I made a box labelled SUGGESTIONS, and put it on my desk with a bunch of pens and little note pads. When someone came in asking what I was GOING TO DO, I’d say, as if I too were perplexed, “I DON’T KNOW! What would YOU do?”

And then I’d point them to the suggestion box, and invite them to put notes in it right then, or later, if they had more ideas.

It seemed to calm them down a little. On my last day, I took the box home. I didn’t open it. I’ve never run out of ideas, unlike in Daily Themes.  

*It’s been taught since 1907. Calvin Trillin wrote about it in 1966, in the New Yorker, in a piece titled “No Telling, No Summing Up.”

** Yes, my leaving was not about them, nor is Nathan's leaving about me. People just do this. Can't help it.