The Beginning… Of The End

FRI., MAY 31, 1996, 8:35 PM
FARM, STUDY

I’d say that it’s appropriate for you to consider this class just concluded as the beginning of your last year of teaching, as you told them on the first day. You may teach a similar course next summer… or even the Human/Spiritual Interacting one. So to encompass this one in the last year might be prolonging the year, but I still approve.

You recognize, of course, that you conduct this course, Death Education, with genuine spirit. Your major problem is deciding what to include, of all that you have done, successfully. Remember your admonition about time: if you’re doing something in a time span that is worthwhile, don’t worry about what other “things” you could be doing in the same time, instead. What you do is spiritual; a substitute activity could be equally or more spiritual. You know this. I just have to remind you.

The testimonies this afternoon, along with the papers just returned, suggest strongly that for some (more than you want in any class) this is an important course, for several reasons. For some it helps to come to better terms with death, this being faced in immediate family or among peers. For others it is a professional help… better future functioning with dying clients and patients. For a few, as touched on today, it gives good ideas for future teaching strategies. You have given them experiences in learning that they can replicate in future classes of their own.

Therefore this may be the last year of your tenured, full-time teaching career, but it might not be the end of teaching completely. You could consider, after the appropriate time “away” teaching this course each semester, and then once a year. This could bring a more gradual end to your teaching career, active. You will know, this time next year, whether this could be a viable option. I won’t say for sure, but it certainly could be. I would like this course to continue, in the way that you do it. This is a minimal endorsement of the idea.

What this symbolizes is that you can look forward to the time of your full-time retirement, but there can be other ways than full-time. You haven’t thought much about this, but it is a possibility. You are well liked by your Chair, your Dean, and your Vice President for Academic Affairs. You should have support if you decided to slide gently to full retirement rather than the precipitous leap.

Your other consideration in all of this is the length of functional life in the body. You would like to have a few years of full-time retirement that is relatively pain-free and nearly fully functional. How to achieve this with retirement plans is both a goal and a dilemma. Are your present experiences with pain and with problems in getting up with leg strength only going to abate with exercise and spiritual practices, are they going to continue as is, or are they going to get worse? Your humanistic culture would recommend a medical judgment. You are not inclined toward this, and, you’re right, neither am I. You are at an age when medical treatment tends to beget medical treatment, and you don’t want to end up in a hospital or under treatment for treatments.

What then? Have faith in your body. Discover and devise ways to function well with what you have. Know that the chances are best that medical procedures won’t achieve much, as this last one didn’t… and that they will disrupt present functioning in new ways.