Curiosity Never Retires
As far as Jerry Smithers is concerned, it was love at first sight. He knows it’s corny. It’s also true. She was single. He was finalizing a divorce. They’d met once before, in passing, but now here she was again at his friend’s surprise party. And those eyes? “She had the most incredible eyes,” he says, and soon enough they were married. For the next 35 years, Jerry and Linda would co-pilot a marriage so fundamentally right, so intuitive, he says, he often needed little more than a nod, little more than a flash of those incredible eyes, to understand exactly where she stood.
“Within 15 minutes of walking into the home we lived in we looked at each other and said, ‘Yep!’ There was no need to discuss it.”
It was a marriage so deep they often examined the hardest part — the long goodbye — with the pragmatic air of business partners, ensuring they didn’t saddle each other or any of their loved ones with complications after they passed. They wanted a clean slate for each other, a clean slate for their children. An unmistakable path forward.
“You lose your parents, it’s not exactly a lot of fun,” he says. “And you don’t want to be making important decisions under those circumstances.”
When they noticed a course called Death Café listed in UNL’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute catalog in the fall of 2014, they jumped at the opportunity. Jerry had been taking OLLI courses for years already, and here was one they could take together, a class perfectly suited to their specific concerns. Taught by two local hospice nurses, both exceptionally skilled, Death Café reinforced certain steps the Smithers had already taken and offered new ones, too, ensuring their plans stayed current and their dialogue surrounding the inevitable never slipped. In fact, Death Café wasn’t about death at all, but how to prepare for it.
“For instance, make sure your finances are in order, and that your financial records are easily accessible by somebody who is responsible,” he says. “Also, the importance of telling your children what you want and what you don’t want, and the discussions you should have with them in calm times when there’s not a lot of raw emotion.”
Smithers today is 78 years old, and though the class didn’t make Linda’s passing last year any easier, didn’t soften the emotional blow, it “certainly contributed to a sense of control at a very out-of-control moment,” he says. Her cremation had long been prepaid, and they checked on it regularly just to make sure. When they finally said goodbye, the chores were already complete. He made a single phone call, and the plan was set in motion. Freed from the logistical burdens, he simply remembered Linda, instead. The memories they shared. Those incredible eyes.
