Gathering in Celebration of Leslie Hornig

It's been so long since I've posted here.  I've had the best intentions of updating our friends, of letting you know that we are doing all right.  There are easy days and hard days, of course; there are constant reminders and memories; there are times of progress and moments of inertia.  Always, for all three of us, there is the most incredible safety net of friends and family, keeping us from falling too far, and setting us back on the high wire.

I'll get around to a more complete update soon, but I wanted to share with you my words from yesterday's memorial gathering for Leslie.

I'll also include a few photos shared by our great friend Betsy Rubin (and one historical shot from Leslie's college roommate Adrienne Booth).  This is how the safety net works; I wondered if we would have photographs from the memorial, since clearly Caroline and Emily and I would be in no position (or condition) to take pictures.  By evening, I had a link to Betsy's images.  Similarly, I e-mailed my friend Scott Silberstein weeks ago to ask if he might bring a better-than-tourist-quality video camera to the gathering, to be mounted on a tripod to get an "archival" copy of the event (especially to share with Leslie's father and mine, who were unable to travel to the event for health reasons).  Scott, co-owner of HMS Media (unsolicited plug: they are the sine qua non in arts media), went me one...no, dozens...better, and brought a professional videographer to capture the event.  As I watched the speakers and performers yesterday, I thought about Scott's wisdom in knowing that a rough image wouldn't be satisfying.

I couldn't possibly do justice to capturing the profound, humorous, nostalgic, personal, universal and oh-so-Leslie reminiscences from yesterday.  Nor, of course, could I adequately visualize (or audiolize?) the musical and dance contributions; for these, suffice it to say that I could not more greatly admire Katie Lehman, Gaby Hornig and Bill Harley for being able to perform pieces so heartbreakingly suited to the moment with strength and expression.  Our dancer, Katie Rosengarten, converted a tiny (and carpeted!) space into her own Auditorium Theatre, bringing life and urgency to evocative choreography by Sarah Ford Thompson.  I hope, perhaps, we can find a way to share the video of the memorial with our friends who could not be with us; even for those who didn't know Leslie, there are truths to be found.

When I was graciously offered use of the University of Chicago's Divinity School for the gathering, I said I expected about 150 people.  By late last week, I'd asked them to set up the maximum 200 chairs.  On Saturday, we filled those and our standing room - about 215 people...and two rats.  Beyond family, those who'd flown, driven or walked to the hall represented Leslie's earliest years, her college friends, our Washington years together, graduate school, her teaching career, our neighborhood(s), our kids' schools (Ancona, ballet and Lab), Nutcracker, my running friends, and even those who cared for Leslie during her illness.  Of course, I'm forgetting several unique and overlapping circles in the Venn diagram that was Leslie's multi-faceted life.  It was fascinating at the post-memorial reception to watch people from those different moments meet and share perspectives.

Here, then, are my words, titled "Carrying On."

By all rights, I shouldn’t be here.  If that sounds strange, then even more oddly, I feel incredibly lucky to be here.  You see, Leslie and I frequently went up against long odds and, until last year, we beat them every time.Leslie and I were introduced by my sister Kathy, but the thought that we’d hit it off romantically was the farthest thing from her mind.

We were, to be sure, an unlikely couple – an athlete (that was her, back then) and a couch potato, a scientist and someone who read “The Little Engine that Could” as coursework, a grown-up wrapping up a year living on her own and a scruffy boy still given to painter’s pants and t-shirts.  Even our similarities should have been a warning flag – both the somewhat spoiled youngest of four children.  Our odds were long.

I don’t remember what first attracted me to Leslie.  Smarts?  Quick, sharp wit?  Confidence?  Oh, wait…I was 20 and most of our encounters were in bathing suits, at my parents’ pool.  But, we did have common interests – on our first date, after a movie, we found flaws in three Georgetown bars (too noisy, too smoky) before one of us had the wisdom to say, “wanna just get ice cream.”

 We set our roles early on – I was the optimist and she was the skeptic.  Our “how we met” story is mundane, but what happened just a week later pretty well describes how our relationship beat the odds for the next 30 years.  Leslie had spent the day trying to figure out how to break up with me – too soon after another relationship – the skeptic in her was winning.  On her way home, though, she had a bike accident – what are the odds? – and I was the only person she knew with a car big enough to hold a bicycle.  She could hardly break up with me that night, giving me another chance to work my optimist’s charms.  That’s why, by all rights, I shouldn’t be here today.

We were young – 20 and 21 when we met; married at 24 – our kids’ ages now.  Wow.  Pew Research will tell you that statistics are stacked against couples who marry early (and as for Leslie marrying me, not only weren’t the odds good, the goods were odd).  Instead, we worked hard to live up to our wedding vow – “in loving to give, and in giving to grow, and in growing to understand, and in understanding to love.”

Even when we decided we were grown up enough to start a family, we were taunted by the fates.  For almost two years, it seemed as though we wouldn’t be able to have children of our own ,and even after we were blessed with Caroline, we had to endure multiple miscarriages before being gifted with Emily.  Long odds...lucky endings.

But, every gambler knows that sooner or later a run will end, and nothing proved that more distressingly than the odds involved in Leslie’s cancer.  She wrote about it in our blog, calculating that – accounting for her age, disease and stage – fewer than 700 women worldwide would get her same diagnosis in a year.  That didn’t take into account her fitness and her scrupulous schedule of seeing her doctors.

At every inflection point, where her disease could take a more or a less disastrous course, or where the cancer could behave typically or anomalously, Leslie drew the short straw.  Her deep understanding of science and statistics took a hard blow, as she came to realize that population data is made up of real flesh-and-blood individuals.

We reverted to our traditional roles – I’d leave doctor appointments gripping hard to any small shaft of sunlight, while she’d see only the gathering storm.  For once, optimism and luck fell short.  Still, in important ways, Leslie’s realism was vital to our understanding and accepting our situation, making the most of our remaining time, and preparing ourselves and those around us.  Leslie often said, “you can’t always control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond to it.”

So, how could I possibly say that I feel lucky to be here?  I’m destroyed by losing Leslie; at least once a day I still reach for the phone to call her, or start typing her name into an e-mail.  I clean up after myself at home, so that she won’t be disappointed.  She was the only one who listened to my political rants.  One of my fears is the entropy of an old house without its repairwoman.

No, I feel lucky because while the odds suggested we’d never get together at all, we had over thirty years to love, give, grow and understand together.

I’m lucky because while the cards suggested that we might never have children, I look out today and see two strong and beautiful young women, who soaked in their mother’s grace, honesty, diligence, critical thinking and kindness, and who wear those traits like a badge, every day.  Carried on the shoulders of true friends – many of them here today in support – they’ve absorbed the blows of the last year with more than resilience.  Caroline and Emily give strength and solace back to me, and I know our friends look in their eyes and know that we will never be the same, but we will be OK.

We were fortunate that, when dealt a losing hand by cancer, Leslie received skillful and compassionate care from her medical team.  Just as important as their medical interventions was their wisdom to know when to stop, and the palliative and hospice care we received eased Leslie’s pain and her passage.  Her doctors’, physician’s assistants’ and nurses’ efforts probably added almost a year to her life, but surely and more important, they added life to her last year.

Leslie’s illness drew us even closer to our families.  We were enveloped in the embrace of our siblings and their families, and especially our parents.  But I also feel fortunate for what Leslie gave back to us.  At the risk of telling “family secrets,” neither the Hornigs nor Kleemans are especially comfortable with open expressions of love or discussing our emotions.  Through her openness, in particular the honesty of the blog, a number of us – myself included – turned to Leslie for guidance in how to accept and express our feelings.  She was a teacher to the end.

I feel lucky that, in our year of living tenuously, we were never more than a phone call away from loving help.  Ever since we moved to Chicago, I’ve commuted to work while Leslie stayed in Hyde Park.  I work mostly on my own; Leslie had great colleagues.  As a result, I’ve always been more enamored of Chicago as a place, while Leslie was more deeply rooted in our community.  Until she got sick, I didn’t fully experience the depth, warmth and clarity of our pool of friends; now, I am grateful beyond words for how that pool kept us afloat.

Our friends made sure we had opportunities to be alone together, but also turned our home into a veritable Algonquin Round Table.  I particularly recall one evening, mere weeks before Leslie died, where five of us sat on the bed, on stools, in wheelchairs – with Leslie at the center – drinking a bottle (or two) of wine and laughing freely.  By then, Leslie was asleep more than she was awake, but every once in a while her eyes would open and she’d quietly toss in a line that was right on target.  The teacher commanded the room without raising her voice.

I am gratified, but not surprised, by our standing room only turnout today.  There were so many facets to Leslie’s life – one of the first things I loved was that she could go in minutes from a softball uniform to formal dress, and be equally comfortable.  The outfits changed over time, but the inner core remained.  Leslie connected with everyone around her – child and adult – with equal engagement and respect.

When Leslie’s Lab School colleagues held a memorial for her, they spotlighted one of her favorite children’s books, Miss Rumphius.  Miss Rumphius lived in Maine, scattered lupine seeds everywhere she went, and had three goals in life: to travel the world, to live by the sea, and to make the world more beautiful.  How had I missed until then why Leslie loved that book so much?  She, too, traveled the world; Little Compton was her one true “home”; and she planted gardens everywhere (and beautified the world by her own presence and her offspring).

This got me thinking about what other principles Leslie lived by, that you might carry forward in her spirit.  Here are just a few that the girls and I came up with:

If you can’t laugh at it, what good is it?

You’re never too old to jump waves at the beach.

Tell someone, “I trust you to make the right decision.”

Give compliments, and invite the people around you to compliment each other.

Ask questions.  Leslie’s doctors must have thought she was related to Steve Jobs, since no appointment ever ended without, “just one more thing.”

Save something for next time – that was our mantra on trips.  Of course, this is a two-edged sword: while it’s a hopeful practice, Leslie and I had many “next times” left unshared.

Keep traditions.  There will be a Christmas caroling party this year; we will sing.  And I will return to "The Nutcracker," at least for one more year.

Finally, plant perennials.  In her gardens, Leslie was always the optimist – what you plant today may not look like much now; it’s an investment in the future.  And unlike relying on luck, if you don’t like how something is growing, it’s OK to move it.

As active and kinetic as Leslie was, for all the times when she was three steps ahead of everyone else in the room and eager to pull them along with her, my enduring image of her will be of the spring and fall days when I’d come home from work and find her on the back porch, in fading sunlight, leaning over the wooden rail in silence, just watching her garden grow.