Quiet reflection

There are not a lot of quiet moments on a ship with 630 undergraduate students, and there are not a lot of times when the community comes together.  Our largest room only holds half of us, so mandatory events like Logistical Preport are televised and people see them in the classrooms or in the cabins.  Last night, we came together in silence to say goodbye to a faculty member who died in Shanghai.

Like everything on board, the memorial service brought special challenges and was changed by the unique community in which we are living.  He died three weeks ago, and the ship sailed the next day, leaving his widow and one of our staff members behind to deal with the logistics of death in a foreign country.  Our psychologist rejoined us in Hong Kong as the wife (also a faculty member), flew home to the US for some time with her family.  With her brother, she rejoined us in Singapore, and we all came together to say goodbye to our colleague last night.

One of our local tour guides found us 800 perfect roses to cast upon the waters.  Two children of another faculty member provided piano and sax music and a student arranged some haunting melodies to play on her violin.  The Archbishop officiated in flowing white robes. 

(It's amazing what people bring with them.  But I guess if you're the Archbishop, you don't leave home without clerical robes.)

Wherever Arch goes, there is magic, and some of us are happy to listen to him order lunch, just to experience his presence.  There was absolute silence in the Union as we wait to hear what would he say on this occasion.  He is not an orator--he talks as if he is having a conversation--so we had to strain to hear.

"The minister was in the bedroom with his wife," Arch started, "and the wife said [falsetto voice], 'I can't sleep tonight, my dear.  Would you please tell me one of your sermons?'"

Should we be laughing at a memorial service?  Well, it's clearly a joke, right?  Is it ruder to laugh at a memorial service or to not laugh at a little joke?

It was classic Arch to knock us off balance a little.  It's a little hard to pull of self-deprecating when you're a Nobel Prize winner, but it's his way of saying, under these fabulous white bishop's vestments, I may or may not have pants I pull on one leg at a time.  This is not about me, folks, it's about us.

He went on to talk about how the ship becomes your home, and the people your family.  He talked about how shipboard life forces us to slow down and pay attention.  He talked about how we take care of each other, how we'd learned to take care of each other.

It was a good message for a group of young people who have little experience with death. My day to that point had been so hectic I needed the reminder—as well as the forced time to slow down and pay attention.  There was nothing groundbreaking about this.  It's probably Memorial Service 101.  Still, I love to see Arch in action.

I saw people putting their arms around each other and people clearly wrestling with grief.  A memorial service is a chance to take a breath and consider the losses in your own life, beyond the person being remembered.  I talked with several people who were revisiting their losses, on into the next day.

At the end of the service, we filed silently from fore to aft, then down to Deck 4, a deck that's off limits under normal circumstances.  The ship started a long, slow figure eight, a symbol for time stretching on infinitely.  Because we could see nothing but sea, the only evidence was the wake, a graceful arc from the stern, fading out of sight.

One by one, we threw roses into the ocean, which swallowed them up immediately.  The widow and her brother stood, greeting each of us and graciously receiving our inadequate condolences.

Our procession down the stairs was marred by a shout from the dining room.  Someone called for a doctor who is a passenger on board.  He ran up the stairs, followed by his wife, who is a nurse.  She looked stricken.  They had been on the scene when our colleague died, and were also longtime friends of his from Charlottesville.  Both had tried to resuscitate him in Shanghai, performing CPR until the ambulance arrived.  It seemed especially cruel to call on him again. 

My mind went immediately to the direst scenario.  Could this be happening again?  How could this be happening again?  The staff captain called a "Code Blue" medical emergency over the intercom.

As it turned out, it was not a life-threatening emergency.  A student had fallen and hit his head, probably fainting from dehydration.  There were three doctors in the dining room at the time.  (There is currently a delegation on board of residents and med students from Charlottesville, along with two board-certified docs, in addition to the two full time docs on the ship, so it's not unusual to have a doctor nearby.)

The community gathered on Decks 5 and 6

I ate dinner with the new widow on her first day back on ship.  Her husband had no history of heart disease, and he appeared fine right up until he wasn't.  He is in some of my pictures from that morning in Shanghai, just part of the crowd around the temple we were visiting.  Then suddenly gone. I was following him as he boarded the bus and collapsed that day, and now I was returning some things left behind in their hurried exit from the bus.

It's hard for me to accept that reality; I don't know how my friend is making it through the day.  She said to me she knows what she's doing.  Being on the ship keeps her from being at home.  I guess it's a more manageable hole in her life, to not-see her husband where he was for only a few short weeks instead of missing all the small things of their lives together.  She said the experience has given her some insight into caring for others, as she has seen how she has been cared for.

I've been struggling with this death since Shanghai.  It was a private moment on a crowded street in Shanghai, not my story, but important to me.  Thoughts of death triggering thoughts about life.  Thoughts about privacy and responsibility. 

I have now visited (we were told at preport) more countries than 95% of the people on earth will ever see.  In most of them, I have taken pictures and told stories, treating other people's faces and stories as if they were my own.  Watching death on a Shanghai street brought the participant and the observer together in a new way.  When the dying man is a friend, the details become intimate, and the responsibility becomes great.

In my "back home" life, I am privileged to have extraordinary people in my life.  I said to one of them, "I don't want to make this about me.  It shouldn't be about me," and I got the gentle response, "It's always about you."  Gentle, not to point out self-centeredness (which I have in abundance), but to say, "If you didn't make that connection to you, there would be nothing there." 

I hope those reading this will be equally generous in judging my telling of my connection to this story.