A Life Remembered
By Director of Publishing Ali de Groot
It is with a heavy and full heart that I write about the late Rud Turnbull, a former client who produced two impressive books with us. The first is a combined memoir and tribute book entitled The Exceptional Life of Jay Turnbull: Disability and Dignity in America (1967–2009), in which the author describes his experience raising a son with multiple disabilities while simultaneously embarking on a legal career in advancing disability rights. The opening lines:
Disability and dignity, and grief after my son’s unexpected death, are the subjects of this memoir. Jay caused me to use my training in law to reform disability policy and practice at a time when there were few rights for citizens with disabilities. This memoir is about Jay’s transformative power—the power to motivate us and others to declare, and then prove, that less able does not mean less worthy.
The second book, Strands: A Memoir of My Professional Life, covers more specifically Rud’s academic and professional life, ending with a long, yet only partial list of accomplishments, including offices held, publications, committees, and legislation.
There are many strands in my life: my psychological journey, the experiences I have had, and the meanings of those experiences. In this memoir, I weave these strands together to create the tartan of my life...
All the accolades and accomplishments aside, what I learned from Rud’s books is that we each have everything to learn from people with varying abilities.
What I remember most about Rud is that he was always open, curious, and gracious in his communications. Regarding the healing properties of writing, I clearly recall a decisive conversation with Rud. He was working on the first book and arrived at the section about his son’s unexpected demise. Rud told me, “I have an entire body of bereavement writing. But it’s nothing like the rest of the text. How can I incorporate it into this book? It doesn’t really go with it, does it?”
I came to find out that by “bereavement writing,” he meant the hundreds of poems and verse he wrote during several years after his son’s passing. Instinctively, I replied, “Keep it just as is. Simply add that section to the book. Don’t touch the poems; don’t edit them further.” With relief and some trepidation, he added that section, entitled “Grief… and Gratitude.”
The hundreds of poems stand tall in their own right, a singular testament to grief and a chronicle of a father’s bereavement. Here is just one:
Apparitions
Death surprised us. It came suddenly, massively, mercifully.
Jay is gone.
Never and forever: the two cruelest words.
Never to be held again. Forever absent.
Except in our minds and hearts.
And then – as suddenly as Jay died –
He returns.
It takes a kind of strength to grasp one’s grief by the horns, to write it down on paper, to expose one’s self to (seemingly) no one but a cold sharp void, getting nothing in return, only more pain. Yet in writing, the formless takes form, and is remembered, and is indeed present.
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