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Engelhardt |
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 RAY DOHERTY |
A wife pays her respects
to a man she dearly loved
of TheColumnists.com
In the vernacular of baseball (which I love), life really threw me a curve ball three months ago.
In February my husband Ray and I were zipping around New Zealand, sipping some very drinkable Down Under shiraz and appreciating the generosity of the people and the charm of little beach towns. A scant five weeks later, Ray was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. He died in 21 days. Gone. Fini. Way too fast and way too soon.
But the last thing Ray would have wanted was people sitting around moping. He had such a zest for life. In fact, he probably enjoyed and appreciated life more than just about anyone I’ve ever known. All I had to do was suggest going somewhere or doing something--and he was standing by the front door putting on his jacket and baseball cap.
I’m not talking about going to the movies or out to eat. If I said to him “Hey, here’s a great price on a cruise to the Mexican Riviera," his instant response was “How soon can we get packed?”
Ray’s life has indeed been full, so I don’t think either can say we feel cheated that he made such a hasty exit. I’ve made a vow that I’m looking at this curve ball as (to mix my metaphors) a glass half full rather than one that’s half empty. My mantra: “Wow! We had 25 wonderful years, give or take a few months.”
My life would have been pretty darned ordinary
without Ray. He was genuinely
funny…so much so that I had to begin my wedding vows 18
years ago with “You bring laughter into my life.” That
he did.
But I never entirely realized how venerated Ray was until now. He touched lives. He touched a whole big humongous lot of lives. I know this now because of what a friend did when she first got a mass email from me telling about Ray’s illness.
“Why don’t you let us put up a web site so that people can go there for updates about Ray rather than you having to send them out?” she wrote back.
At first I thought it was an idea out of left field (baseball metaphor again), but I quickly came around, especially after she sent me a link to the preliminary web site she put together (www.weloveray.com). It was, to put it mildly, a small pebble that rippled and rippled and rippled.
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conveyed his sense of humor, but also his love of theatre |
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What happened? Ray taught drama and English at Sequoia High School in Redwood City, Calif., for 37 years. During 20-25 of those years, drama reached its zenith at the school, and vulnerable, insecure high school students found a home in Sequoia Players, the drama club. Some of these students learned about Ray’s illness, and they told others, who relayed it on to others with whom they had kept in contact.
As a consequence, that little web site ended up generating more than 450 messages for and about Ray. When he was in the hospital, Ray’s children and I tried to select a number of them to read to him. He’d listen attentively, smile and say “That’s nice.”
I want to share just a couple of the wonderful messages with you because there’s no way I could do them justice by paraphrasing them.
One young woman wrote that she was so glad she saw Ray and I performing in “Gilligan’s Island: The Musical” last year because, ““I have to tell you that now I'm an 'adult', and I’m doing well. I hope that you are proud of me because you really helped to shape me, to build my confidence, my work ethic and my sense of humor, and I am very grateful for that.”
A Class of 1986 student wrote “I never liked school, but I can honestly say that your classes are what saved me and gave me some direction at a time when I felt I had none.”
One more--this from a young man I remember was a student when I first met Ray in the 1980s: “At a time in my life when most adults were telling us to be quiet, don't interrupt, and quit fooling around, Ray was one of the only teachers and one of the few people period who appreciated my humor. When I went too far (and there were plenty of times I did) he would say, ‘Carini! Somewhere a village is missing its idiot.’ Sometimes to express his frustration over the difficulties some of us were having in class, he would give us a blank look and say, ‘The only difference between this class and the Titanic... is that they had a band.’ I was always impressed how easy he made acting look. He was effortless, seamless and a master of timing.”
Yep….that was my Ray.
With considerable help from a slew of very talented people, I put together a knock-your-socks off Memorial Celebration for him which was held in (as his students put it) “his house”--the theatre where he taught for so many years. I’m going to write about that amazing day in another column.
I don’t really think Ray thought he was going to die so quickly until he became very weak and lost all interest in eating. When he finally accepted the fact that he was not going to be able to beat the cancer that had spread throughout his body, he beckoned me to lean close and whispered, “I’ve had a great run.”
You sure did, sweetie. Thank you for taking me along for the ride.
©2007 by Joanne Engelhardt. The illustrations are the property of the author. All rights reserved. This column first posted July 16, 2007.
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