Chapter 7: Never Stop Learning

His death devastated me.  It was the end of life as I had known it.  For a long time I was unable to function in any sort of familiar way.  It was decided that I would move to Midland, Texas to be near my son and his family but, first, I went home with my daughter to stay for a while.

Roberta listened as I poured out all of my thoughts and fears, including the guilty feeling that I was somehow responsible for Robert's death because I had been unable to get him to the hospital in time for help.  Then she reminded me that her father had lived to be older than anyone else in his family.  Two of his three brothers and his only sister had died of heart trouble — his sister even fell dead in her doctor's office!  My daughter kept telling me that if I had not taken such good care of her father, he would not have lived as long as he did.

Robert’s niece wrote to tell me about a conversation she’d had with Robert soon after her father’s death:  “We were walking outside together.  Uncle Robert put his arm around my shoulder and said, ‘Well Carrie, I’ll be the next one to go.  None of our family lives to reach the age of seventy’.”  Carrie reminded me that Robert had surprised himself and outlived his younger brother – that he had set the longevity record for his family.

 

When it was time for Roberta to take her own ailing husband to a clinic in another town for treatment, I went to Midland.  My transition to life without Robert in Midland was long and hard; I felt sick, confused, and numb as I went through the legal requirements of the social security office and teacher retirement system.  There were times that I truly felt sorry for myself.  But I think, perhaps, that I began to see myself as others were seeing me and I didn't like what I saw.

It was a very bad year, but time does heal. I left my son's home, spent several months in some private apartments and then moved into a retirement complex.  The caring environment I found in that retirement community was a great help to my recovery.  Although I felt weak, lonely, and in desperate need of help, I'd never felt closer to God in all my life.  I felt the power of the Holy Spirit guiding me, and in time it was clear that I must become involved with people again.  Still, it was very difficult when I joined the church without my husband by my side.

The grief continued at night when I was alone and there were still times when I found myself asking, "Lord, why did you let this happen to me?"  But it became easier to turn my thoughts away from myself when I began to see again with empathy.  I read the story of the lady who was told to gather mustard seed from the garden of a family untouched by death.  No such family could be found. I began to look around and became aware of the great number of others in my own situation.  Many were not nearly so fortunate as I.  Some had difficulties walking, some reading, and some writing.

 

After our years of teaching in the public schools, Robert had insisted that I take over management of our finances.  This proved to be one of the best things he could have done for me.  It helped me to feel more secure after he was gone.  I discovered myself as a single person capable of managing my own affairs.

In recent years, both of my children have mentioned that they were never aware of having particularly limited financial means in their childhood.  At the time, they never thought it unusual that we lived in two rooms of the schoolhouse or had not enough hot water for baths without pouring boiling kettles into the tub.  When they were grown, they had been surprised to discover that we had lived very modestly compared to many of their friends.

I think this is because we were always more aware of those around us who had less (there were many) rather than those who had more.  We always felt very grateful, and there was good cause to be grateful.  We were never deprived in any serious way, we never went cold or hungry; our young family had enjoyed good health uninterrupted by tragedy. 

I remember Robert explaining the difference in the meanings of the words “empathy” and “sympathy” saying, “If a fellow strikes it rich and I feel happy for him, that is ‘sympathy’.  If his good fortune feels like money in my pocket, that is ‘empathy’.”  Robert was empathic.  It seemed he could almost see through another person's eyes, and he loved people.

He gave me a better understanding of those around me and also helped me to better accept my own shortcomings.  I remember a particular incident during our school days.  Immediately after lamenting the amount of cheating going on in my college classroom and vowing with another student never to do it, I copied the answers from my notebook during a pop quiz while my professor was out of the room.  I was feeling very badly about the cheating and confessed to Robert.  “Don't feel so evil” he replied, “On a test a few days ago, I was asked the name of the author of my textbook.  I don't think I could have remembered it — but there was the name of the author plain-to-see on my book laying in front of me on the floor; so I wrote it down.”

I have often observed from my experience that when I criticize another, I am caught in the same snare.  Empathy comes easily when we realize how much we are all alike.  Robert knew that.

Where, at first I believed myself cut in half and no longer intact, I have come to know that the half of me that was my husband still lives.  One of Robert's favorite quotes was from Oliver Goldsmith:  “Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

Our marriage was truly blessed.  We accomplished things together that I could never have touched alone.  And I continually thank God for Robert's Christian life and what he gave to those he knew.  I still remember the sincerity of his prayers, his love for Christ, his love for our children, his love for me, and his empathy.

 

I've always tended to get involved in too many projects.  I just get rolling and seem to be unable to stop until I hit a wall of exhaustion.  After a few years in my new home, I had become exhausted in my usual manner and gone to my doctor.  After his examination, his expression became quite serious.  He told me that he had discovered a “mass” in my abdomen and wanted to schedule some tests.  My daughter arrived to accompany me while I underwent the tests in our local hospital.  After the tests were read, my doctor told us that there was a suspicious area in my liver.

MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston

He suggested that it would save time and energy if we were to go to Houston for exploratory surgery since he coordinated treatment through a well-known cancer treatment center in that city.  All of this had painted a rather bleak picture.

My grandson, Bob, knew nothing of the specifics of my tests when we arrived to stay in his apartment the night before checking into the hospital in Houston.  There was a cartoon hanging in his kitchen that showed a doctor coming out of an operating room saying to the waiting family, "She'll be fine, I've just removed one of her livers.”

For the next full week I was examined head to toe.  Roberta asked the doctor why all of the tests previously run in Midland were being rerun.  “We think some of our machinery is better than theirs,” she was told.  I talked to God and asked him to give me the ability to accept his will.  At the end of the week, a doctor came into my room, sat on my bed and said, “I have just called your doctor in Midland to tell him that because you are so thin and have a weak abdominal wall, we believe the mass he was feeling was probably a floating kidney or something like that.  We can find absolutely nothing wrong with you.  Go home.”  I've learned never to assume that I know the future.  About a year later, my doctor in Midland, the doctor who had felt the mass in my abdomen, died of cancer.

My son moved away from Midland in the years that followed, but I decided to remain there with my friends.  And then one day, my son made a special trip to see me.  He came to tell me that he was going to die.  His death came in less than a year.  I was 86 years of age at the time.

Too often it seems that, if we are lucky enough to live to a ripe old age, those extra years simply provide a grandstand seat to view the tragedies of our loved ones.  The loss of a child is not in a parent's plan.  We have some awareness that we may lose a mate, but the loss of a child is a different kind of blow.

I had a dream I was an adopted child.  My parents had always told me that they loved me, and I knew that it was true.  But the time came when a choice had to be made between their real daughter and

Willie Lee with friend, Louise Duffey, ca. mid-1980s

me; so I was left behind, alone.  My brother Doyle and his wife, Ethel, came to help.  I saw them clearly.  Then darkness came and I was alone again.  I began to look for them.  Though I walked and walked, and looked and looked, there were only strange people in strange houses.  I awakened from the dream with tears streaming down my face.

The feeling of being alone and deserted stayed with me into the day.  I told a good friend about my dream.  She understood the feeling and said, "But you and I still have each other."  Since then, I've tried to remember that we, who are left behind, still have each other — and that our family is made up of more than just our blood relatives; our family is made up of those of us who share understanding.

 

I was prepared to quietly live out my remaining time in the place I had grown to love when my road suddenly swerved again.  A severe stomach virus struck one afternoon.  I called the nurse on duty at the main building.  She came but felt that she needed to go back to her office and could not stay with me long enough to get a doctor.  She said she would call a doctor for me as soon as she had returned to her office.  No doctor ever came or called; no one from the main building checked on me again that evening.  I managed to get through the illness with the help of a neighbor. 

I'd seldom had occasion to test the emergency back-up system in the place where I lived; and now my confidence was destroyed.  With the same capacity for swift decision I'd always thought to be Robert's, I decided to move.  And I knew where I wanted to go.  I wanted to go home to my beloved panhandle of Texas and Canyon, where there were so many happy memories of schooldays with Robert, where my brother, two sisters and their families still lived.  I made some tentative arrangements and then called my daughter to ask for her support with my decision.  I moved to Canyon in the summer of 1989.

As I moved into my new surroundings, another retirement community, the administrator met me with, “I heard you were a librarian.  We have a library here in need of a lot of help.  I wonder if you could organize it.”

Once again, it was a good feeling to be surrounded by books.  The best thing about being a teacher is that we have access to information — and an excuse to take the time to seek it.  Teachers are the biggest students of all.  And no one tells me I'm wasting time when I read or play with my dolls; I can always call it “study” or “preparation” and pretend to be doing it unselfishly.

When I return to my small apartment, my dolls are there to greet me.  The old Victorian lady, her wire rim glasses perched on her nose, sits primly in her wooden rocking chair clutching her Bible.  There is the Spanish senorita in a long ruffled dress ready to dance.  Next to her, George Washington appears tall and somber while his wife, Martha, appears to be on the edge of laughter.  And the girl with long blond curls stands shyly in the corner of the closet.  It is my childhood dream come true, this houseful of dolls, these dolls of every age, description, color, and from almost every country.

My son’s first grandchild, my oldest great-granddaughter, Kendra, will have my dolls. Kendra has always treated them gently and with great attention.  I know that she will love them as I have.

 

Willie Lee Corder, 1989

Believe it or not, at the age of 87, after a lifetime of teaching, I still find myself telling stories to children.  I recently took my doll collection to a local school and gave a talk to a group of fifth graders.  As they looked at my replica of the Egyptian paddle doll, I explained to them that dolls are almost as old as the human race — that they have been found in tombs in Egypt, Greece and Rome dating back more than three thousand years.

One of the greatest rewards of teaching is the pleasure that comes with news of a former student’s particular success or achievement.  No matter how long it has been since that child was in my classroom, I still have the same happy feeling that I had watching him conquer the alphabet.

And many students never forget us.  Not long ago I answered a knock at my door.  “Do you know me?” asked the stranger standing there.  When I answered no, she said, “You were my teacher at Capitola when I was in the fifth grade.”  It had been well over fifty years since I had seen her.

 

Robert never stopped teaching as long as he lived.  One day, as a tiny neighbor girl followed his tracks around his rose bushes, Robert plucked a beautiful rose and gave it to her.  “Pretty flower,” she said.  “The name of this flower is ‘rose’, ” he told her.  “Yes,” she returned, with a bit of a pout, “but her last name is ‘flower’.”

He made a note that he had failed in one of the first commandments of a good teacher — to give her credit, allow her pride in the knowledge she had already achieved, before leading her on.  He’d never stopped learning either.

As I think of him standing in our rose garden and wonder why he is gone and I am still on this earth, I recall that it is because I still have much to learn.