A small, good thing

This morning I picked my first tomato of the season and popped it into my mouth, a tiny yellow flavor bomb that tasted like sunshine. Soon I'll have more, plus plum tomatoes and slicing tomatoes and zucchini and basil, even though my garden is so small it barely qualifies as a garden at all.

A fresh cherry tomato is a small, good thing, a phrase that always brings to mind Raymond Carver's story in which a baker clears space for a couple to express their grief over their son's death. "Eating is a small, good thing at at time like this," says the baker as he feeds the grieving couple fresh rolls still hot from the oven. A brief moment of communion between strangers, and somehow, in the midst of tragedy, life goes on.

Today I'm clearing a space for my own grief over the death of a colleague, a good man and great teacher almost exactly my age. I knew he was dying a week ago--we all knew, even though it was hard to believe after all the times he'd seemed about to succumb to cancer over the past 20 years only to emerge unscathed. This time, though, there was nothing to be done, so when he went into hospice care just over a week ago, we were all urged to send supportive messages that his family could read to him in his declining days.

All week I've been flayed by the tributes on social media written by colleagues and former students, finding myself suddenly on the verge of tears a dozen times a day. Then on Friday night as I was sitting with my family at the Cleveland Indians game--our first time back at the stadium since 2019--I saw the post announcing my colleague's death. It was a like a kick in the gut, but what could I do? I was surrounded by cheering fans and trying to have a fun time with the grandkids. In a world of stadium hot-dogs and pretzels dipped in melty cheese, grief was distinctly out of place.

Today, though, the pain of loss is sinking in. I was never particularly close to my dead colleague and we had to work through some serious disagreements some time ago, but he encouraged me during my own cancer treatment and I always admired his calm strength, his willingness to listen, and his phenomenal teaching skill. We'll have a memorial service on campus this fall after students return, but meanwhile, the tributes keep coming on social media and I keep getting teary every time I think of the gaping hole that's opened up among our campus family.

What can you do at a time like this? Send a card, cherish some memories, clear a space for grief. Eat a fresh cherry tomato right off the vine, a tiny reminder that life goes on, that growth continues, that the cruel world is still capable of producing tiny bursts of sweetness.