Missing Mark Medoff

When I wandered here in August 1969, a college dropout, I immediately met three professors I respected and liked: poet Keith Wilson, playwright Mark Medoff, and filmmaker Bud Wanzer. 

We lost Bud in March and Mark in April – and weeks after Mark, fictionist Lee Abbott (Mark's student and close friend, who played sports with us long ago) also died. 

The Dalai Lama teaches that there's no point worrying about death -- that it's as normal as changing your clothes when they're old and worn out. (I can't share his faith that we return to this Earth in other forms, or – others' beliefs in various heavens.) 

I know too well that feeling attached to people (or anything) inevitably brings the pain of loss; but we do get attached, and we do feel that loss, sometimes strongly.

You can't not miss people you love, or friends and community members who've created wonderful families and done important things for the community. Mark was a vibrant, imaginative, extremely talented person who kept it real. He spent the solitary time, daily, that a writer must, and constantly took time and energy to help or counsel not only students but other writers. He and Stephanie spurned moving to a coast, to stay in this enchanting valley, and made a loving, creative family. 

All these deaths are hard, but they are important opportunities to celebrate the lives we got to share some part of, and to contemplate and even recalibrate our own lives. 

Death is certain. What is not is each person's wonder, uniqueness, and capacity for love. Especially true of Mark (whose family stressed that Sunday's event at the Mark & Stephanie Medoff Performing Arts Center was a celebration), but true of everyone. Death puts a period at the end of a life, and a comma or semicolon in other lives. We stop and recognize what we've lost – and express our gratitude, not merely our pain.

We know we'll die, but often don't feel it. Not feeling it, we don't prepare adequately. A loved one's death is an alarm bell, reminding us. This reminder of death's inevitability urges us to live each moment fully, to speak the love we feel, and to do what matters. 

We'd each like a peaceful death, though preferably not too soon. To die peacefully, it helps to know who we are. And come to terms. 

Mark had done that work. A good writer must; and certain changes in him were evidence he had.

Too often we let negativity and fear cripple us. Superficial ambitions and attachments. Status, habit, and pride distract us. And gadgets! We say, as one Buddhist nun's mother did, “Whattaya mean? The last thing I'd want to do is be alone with my own mind!”

Bottom line? Life is finite. To be used on what matters. For Mark, that's creative work, community, and (above all) family. Whatever it is for each of us, knowing what matters and how best to work toward it means looking honestly inward, often through contemplation, meditation, even prayer. Not because of any civil or religious law, but because we're on this Earth and might as well take full advantage of it.

Everyone and everything will die. Impermanence is a given. Accepting that in our hearts, even welcoming it, eliminates much confusion and futility. And helps us live our best possible lives.

So, as Mark did, let's say “Yes!” to life.

                                    -30-

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 26 May, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website.  A spoken version will air during the week both on KRWG and on KTAL-LP, 101.5 FM (streamable at www.lccommunityradio.org).]

[Mark Medoff was a helluva guy.  Plenty of others are making that point.  Talent and hard work had made him quite successful, but he was still a teacher, saying yes to students and to other writers seeking his thoughts on their work.  When I met him, he was probably 28, a fun and helpful creative-writing teacher (who held classes in a lounge up on the second floor of Corbett Center) and a fine athlete.  We played tennis twice a week for a while, as soon as I got here.  (He had a marvelous lefty spin-serve I could never deal with; and when I dimly recall those matches I feel as if he beat me 6-0, 6-0 every time, which can't be true or we wouldn't have played much!)  He recruited me for his regular touch football games, where he was a fine quarterback (and our games occasionally attracted a couple of NMSU Aggie wide receivers, a real challenge to cover!); and our softball teams won a lot of intramural championships.  (One year we not only played slow-pitch, where we were a real good team, but tried the fast-pitch league with only our slow-pitch pitcher -- and got to the finals before losing.)  Mark was a fun and charismatic friend and teacher.  I moved away, and we weren't in touch for decades; getting to know him again when we were old guys, I could see clearly some of the changes in him that he himself described when we talked.  He had grown as a person and an artist, although I think older Mark was probably a little touch on young Mark in his comments on his youth.  Family life -- a wonderful wife and three fine daughters -- had changed him for the better, as he acknowledged.  I don't agree with him that he was "arrogant" in youth; but he had changed from a friend one would enjoy and respect to a friend one might love, if that makes any sense.  I didn't see a lot of him, but miss him, and can't imagine the huge sense of loss his family feel now.  As he said in a conversation we had on radio, "In the end, it's all about family"; and he and Stephanie created a strong and loving one.]

[Too, I've seen a rapid-fire series of deaths this year -- plus, a week or so before the Memorial for Mark, some really bad news about another close friend and mentor.  Meanwhile our community lost another important member recently, Jack Soules, though he got to live 91 years.  He was an inventor and writer who held many patents and wrote many books.  I knew him only as a feisty presence, well into his 80's, making cogent arguments at various meetings for things he believed in; and his three kids,  David, Bill, and Merrie Lee are all living evidence that he was quite a father.  (Another family full of love, talent, and a capacity for hard work.)]  

[Regarding impermanence: Buddhism urges us to remain aware of impermanence; and, in a sense, Christianity does, too, by urging us to recognize the transitory nature of this life, and take refuge in the powerful permanence of God and the afterlife.

The Buddha spoke of the way deaths heighten (for a while, at least) our awareness of impermanence.  He said that a man who feels impermanence when someone in the next village dies is like the horse that runs at the shadow of a whip; the man who feels it when someone in his own village dies is like the horse that runs when its hair feels the wind of the whip; the man who feels impermanence only when a family member dies is like a horse that runs when the whip strikes its flesh; and the man who's impervious to all that until he himself is stricken by a deadly illness is like a horse that runs only when the whip strikes his bones.]