There But For the Grace of God Go I

I was just reminded of this story not too long ago while talking to my college roommate. I had completely forgotten it happened. Although it happened almost 19 years ago, it has surprising relevance to something that has happened quite recently.

About a month after I started college in the fall of 1990, my English professor called me into his office. He made some small talk about the paper I had just turned in and then said, "So . . . I hear you are going to missing some school in the next few months." I was stunned for a few seconds while a million things ran through my head - most significantly: have I already been kicked out of college? I mean, I haven’t really done anything yet! At least not anything really bad!

"Not that I know of. Why?"

"Well, I got a call from the Dean of Students . . . I think he called all of your professors . . . and he said you were going to be missing school because of a family situation."

"What family situation?"

The professor looked really embarrassed at that moment. I think the look on his face was something like - dear god . . . she doesn’t know - but he said, "Because your dad is sick. The Dean said you might need to take some time off from school because your dad is sick."

I laughed, mostly out of relief that I wasn’t being expelled, and said, "No. I’m sure if my dad was sick, my parents would have told me. They don’t keep things like that from me." The professor looked concerned, but let me leave. As I was walking back to my dorm room, I got to thinking about it. What if my parents really hadn’t told me my dad was sick?

No. They wouldn’t do that. They just wouldn’t. They are very up-front type of people who believe in talking everything out, no matter how painful. And my dad hadn’t seemed sick at all and I had just been there a month ago. My parents don’t hide things from me.

But . . . my paranoid side started taking over. What if they didn’t want me to leave school and decided not to tell me? I mean . . . they did sell their house while I was away at summer camp before my senior year of high school without telling me first. But they told me about it the next time they talked to me . . . so.

As soon as I got back to my dorm room (no cell phone, people, it was 1990), I called my dad’s office. "He’s with a patient, honey," said his secretary. "Can I leave him a message or do you need me to interrupt him?" "No, that’s OK," I replied. We were never allowed to interrupt our parents when they were with patients. Emergency situations, yes, but I had never had an emergency serious enough to interrupt them. Apparently, his dying was not an emergency situation.

I called my mom at her office. She was available. Without any preface, I said, "Is Papa sick? Is he sick and you didn’t tell me?" "No. Of course not," she replied. I explained the whole situation to her, what my professor had said. After hanging up with me, she called my father and they called the Dean. They called me back and assured me everything was fine. Apparently, the Dean had mixed me up with another student. The Dean called all of my professors and straightened the situation out.

However, the Dean forgot to tell my RAs and dorm manager.

A few days later, I was telling this story to a few friends in my dorm corridor and we were laughing about how weird it was and scary and bad that the Dean had gotten me confused with someone else. Our two RAs walked by and caught a piece of the conversation. They stopped dead in their tracks when they heard me say, "Yeah . . . my dad’s not dying."

"What? Your dad’s not dying??"

I explained the story to them and, to my surprise, they got pissed. Apparently, the school had made both of my RAs go through grief training because my dad was dying. They had been in training for an entire weekend and had missed some big party or something. They were having daily meetings with the dorm manager because they thought I was in huge denial because I seemed to be living my life just like I always had.

After a few weeks, it kind of became a joke among my friends. If I was acting super happy or something out of the ordinary, my friends would say, "Man . . . she must be in denial." The story was told at countless parties until the party a few years later where a girl told us all to shut up and said, "That was me . . . that was my dad." All of us shut up and felt pretty bad. I said, "I’m so sorry . . . I had no idea. How is your dad?" (OK - not the brightest thing to say, but I was drunk.)

"Dead. He died."

I knew this girl because our names were very similar. In fact, our last names were the same and our first names sounded alike. We were often confused for the other, even though we looked nothing alike. We weren’t really friends in college, but I have always thought about her and how hard it would have been to lose your dad while you were in college.

Sixteen years later, my youngest cousin started her first year of college. Two months after she started, her dad was diagnosed with brain cancer. He died in January of this year, during her junior year of college.

Life is funny sometimes. A situation that could have been very bad for me turned into a funny story I told people at parties. But for my cousin, it came true.

I’m not a religious person, but I do like the saying, "There but for the grace of god go I." Even though I forget it often, I am a very lucky person. I’ve had a lot of advantages in my life. I can’t explain to my cousin why it is fair her dad died when she was just 21 and my dad is still alive when I am 37. I don’t know how to explain why these things happen. But I do need to remind myself every day how lucky I am.