A mission of salvation in a dark basement room

Yesterday I scavenged through a dead woman's bookshelves. Although I don't know her name, or anything about her except that she was a former school teacher and a survivor of the Holocaust, I came to admire and like her in the couple of hours that I was there in her dark, empty house.

The books we found there gave evidence of an intelligent person with eclectic tastes: hardcover, first-edition novels (from Lolita to Star Trek), a collection of Samuel Beckett's work (in English and French), travel books, cookbooks and issues of Bon Appetit, humor, biography, and trendy psychology—written in English, French, German, Spanish and even Russian. She had been a voracious reader—there were stacks of books in other rooms of the house,  and they obviously had been read because almost every one contained scribbled comments on the inside front page that summed up her reactions, e.g., "...highly amusing" and "...a suspenseful read."

My companion and I were there to take out what we could for the local high school's annual book sale because no one else wanted her books. She had been single, childless and elderly, and after she died in that house, no one came to claim her books. In fact, the realtor who bought it was just going to throw them away. We were there on a mission of salvation.

Looking through her collection, I was reminded of the autistic knitter. This woman's book collection also represented a kind of art form or life's work. And all of it, including her tiny commentaries, had been destined for a garbage can. Perhaps there was other evidence remaining of her life beyond that quiet house—art works or crafts or letters she had written, still preserved by companions or the sons and daughters of her companions—but I doubted it. With a sinking feeling, I felt like I was deciding what part of her would go on, even if only to strangers that won't know her name.

But what struck me more was the sudden realization that if everything she had read had been on an e-reader, my friend and I wouldn't have been there in her house in the first place, and I never would have spent those few moments in her lingering presence. All those titles, the odd juxtapositions of Art Buchwald and Ferlingetti and science fiction paperbacks, gone in a blip.

There are some deaths that obit writers must look forward to...

"As a writer, director and producer, Leonard Stern was a legendary (noun) in show business. He had an (adjective) career that took him to (geographic place) with (celebrity name). Fond of (article of clothing), standing (a number) feet tall with a gray (body part), he (verb) more than a share of (noun), including (liquid)."

[from the obituary,  Leonard Stern, TV writer and producer who co-created Mad Libs, dies at 88, in today's Washington Post]

The dark bookends of my reporting career

When I started work at the Winston-Salem Journal in the summer of 1985, a dark cloud hung over me, especially as I walked to work from the public parking garage that first day of work. It was an unease that was with me until I was safely inside the building.

The previous year, on her way to work, newly hired copy editor Deborah Sykes was murdered just a few blocks from where I was walking. (Sykes had just been hired by the Journal's then-afternoon paper, The Sentinel).

Although the circumstances were slightly different—I was going into work at 9 a.m., a busier time than her early a.m. entrance—I felt her ghost with me every morning and every evening as I walked to my car, even after I got to park in the closer-by company parking lot.

A few weeks later, I moved up to Boone to work at the paper's Northwest Bureau. I relaxed there, unworried about keeping late hours since my office was on King St., the town's main drag. I could park my car right in front at night and walk to it straight from my building.

But just weeks after I left Boone for graduate school in Chapel Hill, a young female reporter at the local Watauga Democrat was found murdered near the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Her first name was Jenny. She was young, sweet, dark-haired, still fairly fresh from college. The newspaper accounts at the time said she'd been on her way to work early in the morning, probably accosted in downtown Boone and driven out to the Parkway where she was murdered.

"That could have been me"—a whispered epiphany. Since then, whenever I've left work in the dark, I've enlisted co-workers or building guards to walk out with me, especially when the streets are quiet and empty. I don't feel paranoid, but cautious—a caution composed equally of regret and sadness and fear.

Is it the price women pay when we walk alone? If not death, then the persistent threat of death, no matter how undeterred or indifferent we pretend to be. It is the price two newspaper women in one state paid in the space of two years. Since men outnumbered women at newspapers at the time, imagine the statistics.

Maybe the worst thing about these murders was that they were expected, in a horrible, subconscious way—they were out when no one else was out, they were women, they were alone. Yet in that time period, as far as I know, no male reporter in North Carolina (or anywhere in the United States, as far as I know) was murdered or assaulted.

I put on a brave face, walking out of the Winston-Salem Journal and into the dark. I was one of the guys when I was in there, typing away, drinking coffee, slinging words around. But out there, in the silence, I was different from them, vulnerable in a way they probably couldn't understand, a vulnerability I probably would have denied, even to myself.

The poetry of the dead zone

Many times in the past, I'm sure, I rolled my eyes if I saw an old person poring over the Obituaries section in the newspaper. I thought it was morbid, their trying to find a familiar face or life, perhaps also trying to see who among their elderly friends had made it through another week.

But more and more these days, my eyes are drawn to that section of the Washington Post. Maybe it's because I am getting older and I've begun to occasionally see the names of acquaintances and neighbors there. That's not the only reason, though. I've started to see beauty in the brief prose that sums up a life.

Read past the horrifyingly succinct labels in the sub-heads (e.g., "Teacher," "Jewelry Maker," "Guidance Counselor," "Church Member") and you can see a road map of a life in retrospect:

• The "Church Member" assisted amputees for the Red Cross during WWII. (How?)
• The "Jewelry Maker"'s first marriage ended in divorce. (Why?)
• The "Guidance Counselor" danced professionally when she was young; her husband died 13 years before she did. (Did she miss him? Did she miss dancing?)

Most obits in the Post are written in the same four or five-paragraph format: (First p.) the person's full name, age, cause of death, and current town; (Middle paragraphs) significant events and achievements—jobs, degrees, volunteer positions; (Final p.) survivors. Were they happy? Bitter? Anxious? Regretful? Loved? The obits never say. The story, the poetry even, is in the words not written, the broad and full life that cannot be described so formulaically.

More distinct are the "In Memoriam" boxes that people put in the paper, usually on the anniversary of their loved one's death or birthday. The most heart-wrenching "In Memoriam" ads are those to children. On the first anniversary of an 11-year-old's death, her family ran a photo of her with the dates of her life beneath, and then the text of something she must have written shortly before she died: "If I were President...I would stop war. I would also want to try to stop pollution. If I can stop it, I will."... Is there anything more tragic than what is contained in these four column inches?

I still remember an "In Memoriam" I read a couple of years ago; beneath the photo of an ordinary-looking middle-aged man who had died five years before were these words: "I would give one year of my life to spend another day with you." That's a story there that could be written a hundred different ways by a hundred different people. Even the person who placed that ad could describe her life/their life a hundred different ways—and the story would never be completely and fully told.