A beautiful day

Every week I drive to Dubuque at least once. The agency I work for has work for me there, and I really enjoy the work. I also enjoy the drive. Highway 151 between Anamosa and Dubuque is full of wide vistas. It's the country that inspired Grant Wood. I used to look at Grant Wood paintings and think they were tantamount to Norman Rockwell, overly stylized and not serious enough. When I moved to Iowa, I began to understand rolling hills and crops in tidy rows. I have also softened toward Norman Rockwell.

I have begun packing my camera along on the drive and have started to take pictures in places I like. It is the very cusp of Autumn and I'd like to document a little of what I see as I make the hour and fifteen minute commute.


Today started out hazy and as I drove north it became cloudier. There is a lot of enthusiasm for what we do in Dubuque and I work with people I really respect and so it was a good day.


Mid-afternoon, I made the drive home again, heading for a meeting in Cedar Rapids. The sun had burned off the haze and the sky was becoming more and more blue. I'd been trying to get hold of Su Williams, my assistant, who had not shown up for work on Monday. I had left her a message. When my phone rang and I saw her name, I picked up. "Hey Su, how are you?"

Su lost kidney function about 17 years ago and has been a dialysis patient ever since. She explained that if she got a new set of kidneys her condition would begin to erode the new ones, so she has just carried on. It was not Su on the phone.



It was her son-in-law, telling me that Su passed away last night. Someone from the dialysis unit called when she missed her first appointment in 17 years, and a family member went to her apartment and found her in her chair.


Su started working for me when my program was in crisis. We had an inattentive administrator who didn't understand our business and didn't want to. Things were bad. Su hit the floor like a tsunami. She made valentines for all the clients. She cleaned out the refrigerator and inadvertently broke it by chipping too hard at the ice with a knife. She was horrified. We teased her relentlessly. "When we get to the new site, there's a BIG refrigerator. You can put it on your wall after you kill it!"


Su could schmooze anyone. She finessed agitated delinquents, called families for insurance information, made reminder calls. She calmed kids in the lobby. Su had been a high risk foster parent and she adopted one girl nobody seemed to want. "We were getting along, and she kept getting disappointed and so I said 'why don't you just be my daughter.'"

Su remembered the receptionist's birthday and put on a full Mexican smorgasbord with Chorizo and beef and chicken, guacamole, corn and flour tortillas. She knew that Barb was a little anxious and needed appreciation.

Su understood that we were all very busy taking care of kids and families and that this was important and it was her mission, too. She knew that too much information was in my head and needed to get into manuals, and she took that on. She had an amazing mind for process and could get it down. She left me with manuals and processes. We met every week and I'd give her tasks and projects and she would make them happen.



Su was afraid of no one. Our CEO, whom she didn't know, walked in one day and wanted to check things out. Su would not let him pass. She was 5 feet tall and looked older than her 55 years, and she stood right in front of him and insisted that he identify himself. She coralled 10 delinquent kids with anger control problems each night and insisted they stay in our lobby until their parents came. Thought nothing of it.



I talked to Su about my mother. I told her about the facility insisting that I hire someone to come in and take care of Mom's cats. Su's immediate response was "I'll do it. I'd love to meet your mom. It would be fun to take her out and do things."


Last Friday was grandparent's day at Prairie Ridge Elementary School. Su took the day off because she'd been to grandparent's day for each of her grandchildren. The youngest said "you have to do it for the baby, too."


Su spent a lot of time with her grandkids. She made crazy recipes and tried weird foods. She was spontaneous and present in their lives. She knew, I think, that each day we live is a gift. She made a great deal of effort to connect and make a difference. I came to take her for granted.


Goodbye, Su, assassin of refrigerators, schmoozer extraordinaire, friend, colleague, teacher. I'll miss your wry humor and your unflagging lust for life. You wrung every minute out of it that you could get.


When I left a message on her machine yesterday, her recording said: "Hi, this is Su. Leave a message. It's a beautiful day."


And it is.