grieving

I was teaching Herodotus this morning and was unexpectedly overcome with grief; had to stop for a moment before I could go on.

My friend Malcolm Wallace, my undergraduate professor and mentor at the University of Toronto, died unexpectedly two weeks ago. His health had been uneven but he seemed to be better, and it came as a surprise. He was up at his family cottage at the time. He retired a year ago.

He was the one who taught me Greek. He used to reschedule a make-up lesson when I skipped a class, which embarrassed me enough that I stopped skipping classes, eventually, something that never happened with anyone else. He was the one who believed in me and thought I had talent and could do something with it. He's the reason I'm a professor now, instead of a lawyer, or an editor somewhere. He had an enormous influence on my life.

We corresponded through graduate school, that is, when I was in graduate school, and after I got my job out here we used to meet for coffee or lunch whenever I was in Toronto, for the last fifteen years at least.  At the very least I would call him. The last few times I've been in Toronto we haven't gotten together. I usually have the kids with me and it's hard to get out of the house for an hour, I have to impose on someone else to handle child care so that I can get away, and it's enough of a burden on my parents that I haven't always done it. So I last saw him last year. He had been ill on and off for the a few years before that - he had an attack of encephalitis after a bout of flu, several years back, and it took him a long time to recover. But the last time I saw him, more than a year ago, he was in excellent form; he was his old self again. We talked for nearly three hours, about all sorts of things. It was great to see him himself again. I meant to call him this summer, but I was only in Toronto for a day.

When I heard he'd died I found myself in tears on and off for two days. I wanted to phone him to make sure that it wasn't true. I still want to.

Teaching Herodotus today, it all comes back again. He was the one who taught me Herodotus; it was his specialty. He taught me how to think about Herodotus, and that Herodotus was worth thinking about. There is really nothing I know about Herodotus that he didn't teach me. Whenever I read anything new about Herodotus I would phone Mac and we'd talk about it. He was usually skeptical. I can hear his voice.  

And now I can't call him.