[Note to Reader: What follows is my first SSW (Sustained Silent Writing) entry from Spring Semester, 2025. The prompt for today was twofold: (1) a student Xavierite journalist had asked me to share some thoughts for an article she was writing about Meg Carroll, whose death last month had shocked and saddened the University community; and (2) January 23. The two topics pointed in different and similar directions, a happy/sad accident.]
Meg Carroll was one of “those” people—someone special, someone indescribable, someone widely recognized as a legend while she is alive, and someone puzzled over after she is dead: “Could she really have been all that she seemed to be? Why are there not more like her? How could she be gone?”
Meg was a friend and colleague in many and varied respects. At meetings, I often waited for her contribution, and when she spoke, I hung on every word. She threaded the needle of incisive criticism on the one hand, and constructive input on the other. She had historical context, and was able to trace out the past, often contradictory, practices and policies. That was the incisive part. But she was the ultimate team player, and always worked on practical solutions, usually volunteering to chair a committee or find student teaching placements in late December for January teaching assignments [this specific service being her last professional miracle, just days before succumbing to becoming an actual angel in heaven, rather than just a human approximation on earth].
Over the course of our decades working together, I came to know Meg in increasingly warm and affectionate ways, learning new things about her past—a past that was surprisingly connected to mine (as I discovered, just a few years ago, that we hung with the same crowd in college, even to the point that her first husband, unbeknownst to me at the time, was a classmate of mine in the seminary).
Meg was wise and talented, but most of all she was kind and generous. The love she drew to her from so many students and friends and family gave her almost an aura that was visible. She represents the soul of SXU in its best potential. She was one of a kind, but oddly, also, a simple incarnation of what one would expect of a professor and friend, if such things could be materialized from their ideal form.
We are left with the clichés, “The good die young”; “We won’t see the likes of her again”; “The world is a much smaller and lesser place without her”… and on it goes.
So today, January 23, is the start of a new writing notebook in Advanced Writing. As has happened the past few years, the start of the notebook experience coincides with Angelo’s cycle of January-February that dominates my psyche with increasing weightiness each passing year. This was to be my last year of notebook keeping, but now that I’ve delayed retirement an additional year, I still find myself in the flow of the old routines. Will I still keep a notebook after I retire in 2026? I should. I heard myself describing to my class the value and impact that the notebook experience has had on me, leaving me to ask of myself, my students, and everyone else: Why don’t we carve out regular sessions? Why is the 40-minute session such an unusual activity, especially if it brings all those advantages I spoke of?
Today’s remembrance of Angelo goes back to 1986, his year of birth. In 1986, January 23 was on a Thursday too. That thought threw me back to Wednesday, January 22, 1986, when the labor pains started … early in the morning. Then, after the birth, nearly a day later (I’ve left out many details!), I left the hospital; I went to Walgreens to buy the $5 (a lot of money back then) Super Bowl preview/program; and then I actually went to my morning class with Dr. Mary Thale at UIC. The class was my Alexander Pope course. There were only three of us students in it; coming from a 2:30 AM birth, I guess I was kinda showing up the other two guys (who Dr. Thale thought were slackers in general). I was Dr. Thale’s favorite, since in those days I was a full-on scholar luxuriating in my nightshift security guard gig at the Wrigley Building. Never before or since have I ever been able to complete my reading and other assignments with such diligence (I think the magic of the marble walls and wrought brass elevator doors created a positively Burkean scene: act ratio of possibility). Ah scholarship. I was in the zone as a student—soon to be in the zone as a parent, Ph.D. candidate, home-owner, husband, and citizen. Ah, the 80’s and 90’s, a heady time for me in my thirties, as solutions and possibilities beckoned.
Before the seminar, I did let the group know that I had just come from the hospital. Such good news. Dr. Thale commented about a friend of hers who had shared his reaction with her upon seeing his first child, just after his birth. Her friend said, “I saw myself dead.” (That’s the kind of class it was.) I was taken aback, but she went on to explain, in a way, I suppose, that makes sense, about the circle of life, the coming of the new generation, and thus the eventual departure of the old generation. The comment was the kind of news Garrison Keillor might have brought from Lake Wobegon, which is part of the reason, I guess, it stuck with me.
I didn’t expect to be thinking of Dr. Thale this morning. Whenever I think of her, I think of how very old I thought she was at the time. Grey-haired, wiry frame, and bespectacled, she seemed an archetypal English professor. An archetypal, old English professor. An archetypal, old, female professor. I learned today, however, that back then, in 1986, she was only 62. I found that out because, in Google AI-ing her this morning, I found her obituary. She died in October of 2008 at the age of 84. RIP, dear Dr. Thale. These days, as I eye my own retirement (I am now 67, five years older than the ancient Thale)—and reflect on 1986, and the meaning of my time in graduate school, with professors like Dr. Thale, and my beloved Gene Ruoff (who I also just recently learned has died), my thoughts swirl and interconnect. What should I be aiming at? What is my legacy?
I’ve never looked upon Angelo (or any of my kids) with the result of me seeing myself dead. That’s all good. I wish I could look upon Angelo (and Mary Thale and Gene Ruoff) and not see them dead too. They all accomplished much, and there’s much to relish in each of them, and all the other loved ones I’ve lost, we’ve lost. I do look upon the whole of everything with sadness. What is the point? What lasts? In such thoughts, I recall the truisms I’ve come to rely on: just make the most of the time, while you have it; “Gather ye rosebuds, while ye may” [Insert great Pope quote here!! Would I, were I still the scholar I was in 1986.]
The memories are the thing … I hope they stay. Even in so trivial a memory as attending Dr. Thale’s Pope class, and showing up my fellow classmates in passive aggressive ways, as was my wont, there is joy that sustains. Angelo, I wish you were here. But I don’t know: In a sense, you weren’t really there in that first dramatic week of your life, with the Bears winning the Super Bowl at age 3 days, and the Challenger exploding on that following Tuesday at age 5 days. But you were part of it then in your infant seat in front of the TV, and you were part of today, too, when we had the cake and told stories during and after the movie we shared in your honor. The shadows of your presence are with us each day. And the deeper parts, the person you were, stay with us, and grow, if only faintly. It’s a little more work these days to keep you right there, and it’s also just as easy to do so as ever. It’s a mystery. Happy Birthday, Ang!