RIP - Clyde Forsberg [Take 3]

 "I might have been only 20 years old."

I'm not done with you. 

I'm angry.

Really angry.

Those tears of grief are gone, and I am left with a burning rage.

How dare you die.

I know I am not the only person who was not done with you yet.

Your children.

Your wife.

Your ex-wife.

Your students.

Your nemeses.

And I am the least of these, and not in the Matthew 25:3 kind of way. What I mean is that our relationship was peripheral, to both of our lives -- our circles of community over lapped. 

Furthermore, I had more time with you than was my fair share. 

We had that 18 hours car ride together, just you and me alone on the road, Calgary to Provo, so I have no right to ask for more of your time, to say I didn't have enough time.

But I didn't. 

And I'm mad.

So, like I said. There is a long line up of people who needed more time with you,  so you had better get back here right now.

I mean it.

I'm gonna give you to the count of three.

That's right.

Yes, I have sunk that low.

I'm beyond cajoling, entertaining, begging, ignoring, pleading, gentle persuasion, or crying. All that's left is my anger.

I didn't finish saying what I needed to say. 

You better come back. 

You are not going to like seeing what I need to say, to put down in words. 

Do not make me do unto you as you have done unto others: tell the truth, tell the whole truth, the good the bad and the ugly.

I'm waiting.

Waiting.

Okay, that's it.

3

Yep, the clock is ticking. 

And I'm not throwing in any of that 2-and-a-half business. We're both adults here. Me 54, you 64. We both know that would just be me acquiescing to your obstinance, stalling, giving you more time.

2

Yep, that's right. Only two more seconds for you to show up. I am so mad at you.

1-and-a-half.

For Kolob's sake, come on. Get back here.  Look. I'll even accept a visit with you in the form of a Mormon angel, hovering bedside, no wings but glowing to give you a bit of heavenly authority.

Oh, bother.

Fine. 

I'll write these stories down. 

I didn't want to. 

And now you've even called my bluff from beyond the grave. That's infuriating.

For honestly, we both know I never would have had the courage to recount these stories  to your face, my version of them. 

What would the point have been? 

They happened so long ago; surely we are both different people now. Over 30 years have passed.

But your death has unearthed these memories, and they haunt me in the middle of the night, before in me in my sleep.

So I write.

Story One: A small fish in a big pond.

I signed up for an Institute class. It was a class where students took turns giving  talks over lunch. My spot was fast approaching. I was anxious. 

I had been studying the various arguments for the existence of God posited by early christian scholars (read Catholic): the ontological argument, the cosmological, the teleological argument.

Painstakingly I poured through the Mormon Hymn book, looking for references to my Heavenly Parents in songs, sifting through lyrics to identify if any of these academic arguments were captured in these hymns.

[Aside: my favorite line from a hymn is, "the thought makes reason stare."]

The day arrived. I shared my findings with this small class over lunch, voice quivering out of nerves in spite of my years of speech training.

My thesis? Mormons do not have a coherent, single argument for proof of God's existence. They draw upon a variety of arguments, arguments that can be found in the writings of early christian thought. 

You were there, Clyde, and sitting on the back row. I can see your facial expression, one I perceived of as disdain ("reason's stare"). You raised your hand not to ask me a question, but to make a comment, a long comment. You gutted my thesis. You asserted that hymns reflect artistic license, poetry, not theological argument. One simply cannot attribute phrases in lyrics as giving any insight into the beliefs of those who sing them, you stated. 

You spoke.

I shrunk. 

It is not that your point was incorrect, my thesis sound.

But for me, songs had been holy writ, an easier form of access to belief. And I felt shame. I felt inferior. I felt publicly exposed as an academic fraud.

What you missed that day was the chance to allow that fledgling academic to keep center stage, to stand feeling respect for herself, for her efforts to bring her academic scholarship to her religion, her religion to her new found tools for thought. She needed a dose of that. 

And what she missed that day was realizing that you were paying her an extremely high compliment. You were treating her like an equal, you a Master's student in the Religious Studies Department, her a Bachelor's student of Humanities. You paid her the respect of showing up. Of listening. Of responding. Of sharing your reaction. 

I can see that now. 

She can see that now.

She and I feel better, we feel better now, and  for that, they thank you.

But there is more to the story, I see now, and some of the anger remains, for what neither you nor I spoke of in those days was the patriarchal waters in which we swam.

What you couldn't see was that when you took your well-sharpened academic knife to my talk, you inadvertently drew blood, increased my vulnerability in a setting where I already was disadvantaged. For there, sitting there on the front row,  his back to you, his smirk to me, was the institute director. 

As you spoke, and I withered, he inflated. It was as if seeing me deflated, puffed him up even further - Melchizedek priesthood holder, salaried with the tithes of the faithful, keeper of the sacred knowledge of a temple worthy Mormon male. 

You did his work for him. He didn't have to take me down a few notches as he was want to do. 

I had met with him at his request on a previous day. He called me into his office, echoes of personal priesthood interviews setting the stage, guiding expectations of behaviour and boundaries. 

He claimed to see me, know me, perceived me as intellectual, searching for answers, searching for mine. And if I had problems with any Mormon teachings, his door was always open, he could be of help.

He painted himself as open-minded, forward thinking, available to listen to any opinion, longing for intellectual discussion.

And there, in the confines of his center of power, one-on-one  he whispered to me in hushed tones an example of what I might be questioning. The immaculate conception, for example. 

I had no questions about this, but in he pressed. If it seemed implausible to me, not to worry.  Some credible Mormon scholars, him included he confided, believed that God had come down and had actually had  physical intercourse with Mary and that is how she had gotten pregnant. He expression suggested I was  being inducted into a club, a select few ready for sacred truths that not everyone was mature enough to grasp, to handle.

Trust me, fair reader, I am repulsed as you are upon rereading these last few paragraphs. And at the time I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't articulate what. I just knew to get out of there, and engineer to never be alone with him again. I felt disgust and shame.  I didn't tell the soul. 

I might have been only 20 years old. Now at the age of 54 I am disgusted at the thought of a man in a position of power speaking to a young woman over whom he has power alone in an office  making such claims in hushed tones.

Clyde, I thought I wanted to tell you off for being so hard on me publically, but now I just feel compassion for the both of us, making our way in the academic world, in the cultural community in which we were raised. 

And I think I no longer feel the need to speak with you, express my anger, for those embers have died down, and I'm left thinking, we both did okay, didn't we.

Story Two

(coming soon)