Remembering a Friend

Nancy working a pre-show table for For Every Man, Woman and Child.

Today is Nancy M. [Johnson] Resh's birthday.

She died suddenly over the weekend of November 15, 2010.  She was young, in her 50s.  As soon as her family had been notified, I set-up a memorial page on Facebook.  Now, I am quite confident she would never, ever have opened a Facebook account for herself (and I know this because I tried to talk her into it several times--but if she did have one, it was very private), but I did it for her students, family, and friends--Deaf and hearing alike.  I was amazed by the sudden outpouring of grief expressed on that page; even today, I look at it and whisper to myself: "Wow!"  Nancy affected a lot people in a lot of ways.  I can only legitimately write about how she affected me.

Nancy was a good friend: she accepted me for who and what I am.  While she considered herself to be a Southern Baptist, she had no qualms at my declaring myself to be a secular humanist, an atheist.  I'll never forget when, on a very, very rare moment of weakness, I shared with a student that I'm an atheist: the student began to cry.  Why did that student cry?  Out of disappointment, fear for my supposed soul, something else?  It angered me; it hurt me; I felt unaccepted for who/what I am.  I turned to my good friend, Nancy, who helped me laugh it off.

We accepted each other because, and this was a strong tie between us in our friendship, acceptance of differences was important to both of us.  We both got angry at a lot of the same things: violation of people's basic human rights, mistreatment of the Deaf, lazy and/or manipulative people,  bad (ex- or mostly ex-) husbands, uncooperative computers, intolerance, self-centeredness, badly made coffee, and so on.  We both laughed at a lot of the same things--we joked about almost everything.  Our friendship mostly centered at and around our jobs, but since our jobs were the center of our lives  (at least they seemed to be), our friendship grew rapidly.  We did a lot of projects together and we supported each other in individually lead projects, too.  While my projects were more scholarly-focused, Nancy's were more people focused--we balanced each other out that way: I kept encouraging her to work on scholastic projects; she kept pushing me to become more involved with people (instead of books and DVDs).  I considered her to be one of my best friends.

The things I have learned (or re-learned) from (or with) Nancy: not to take my job so seriously, to stop and have fun once-in-awhile, to take better care of myself,  and to ignore all the bullshit we (all of us) encounter day-in and day-out.

I have noticed that several people have wished Nancy "Happy Birthday!" on the memorial Facebook page.  I have to say it: I don't believe that Nancy "is looking down on us" or that she exists in some form of afterlife (in heaven or elsewhere).  I do believe, however, that it would have made Nancy cry to learn just how loved she was and still is.  I do believe that Nancy would have been shocked by all the affection sent in her direction.  I do believe that all this affection and attention is a source of comfort for both her friends and her family.  I do believe that the words, "Happy Birthday Nancy!" have special meaning--rather like "Happy Hanukkah!" or "Happy Halloween!"  They are words of love, and as such are powerful.

Drawing by Giles Johnson.