Memory Eternal, Gail!

On Saturday I’ll be leaving Haiti for a few days to attend the funeral of Dr. Gail Walton, one of my most important teachers and mentors from Notre Dame. Gail was the director of Music at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame, and the director of the Liturgical Choir, the group that I sang with all four years of college. She was suffering from leukemia and died on Wednesday from complications after a bone marrow transplant. I’ve written many pages of memories and reflections on how important she was for me and so many others in our journeys into adulthood, but I’ll keep it short here.

I joined the Liturgical Choir in the first weeks of my first year at Notre Dame, and in the following four years I discovered a passion, learned a whole set of new skills, developed some reasonably well informed opinions about sacred music, grew into a more adult understanding of my Faith, formed some of the most important friendships of my life, worked really hard, and had so, so much fun. Gail was an incredibly accomplished musician who somehow tolerated – or rather seemed to enjoy – leading a choir of 60 eager but not all well trained undergraduate singers. I don’t know how she got us to sing the complex music we sang as well as we sang it … except that she was just an incredible teacher. I couldn’t read music and didn’t know a fermata from a subito piano when I started singing with Gail, but fifteen years later I’m still singing some of that same music with my choir in Cambridge, and even have a lot of it memorized from when I learned it with Gail. She taught us to appreciate the liturgical significance of the music we were singing and to approach our music ministry with so much care and respect. She knew that while the Sunday morning Masses at the Basilica might become routine for us, that each Mass brought first time visitors and prospective students and returning alumni and people who were suffering or searching, and that it would be our music that would help them to pray more deeply. We knew we were ministers, not performers, and because of this she demanded excellence.

Beyond music, over the years Gail shepherded hundreds of undergraduates through that often tumultuous transition through college into adulthood. She was sometimes one of us – laughing along with our jokes, and standing with us flipping burgers at pre-game concession stands. But she was just as often the adult voice of reason helping us with the difficult decisions, challenging us to be better than we thought we could be, cheering along with all of our success, and helping us pick up the pieces when we screwed it all up. I will always treasure the memories of making beautiful music with Gail, and I will always be grateful for her guidance and friendship in these past fifteen years. I have no doubt that Gail Walton’s kindness and passion and hard work set an example for me that helped me become who I am today.

In the years after college I stayed in close contact with Gail. I would see her every time I was on campus, and at so many weddings of choir friends all over the country. She always responded to e-mails, even the ones that were just to say hi. I saw Gail back in June at Notre Dame at my 10th reunion, and told her that I would be spending the next school year in Haiti as a volunteer teacher. While many people struggled to make sense of that decision at this point in my life, Gail just smiled and said how proud she was – followed immediately by all the motherly questions about safety and security. Throughout the next few months, every time I sent an e-mail update from Haiti she always responded with a quick line or two of encouragement and support. After the January 12 earthquake one of the first e-mails I received was from Gail, offering her thoughts and prayers, even as she herself was suffering so much.

When I got the news that Gail was in her last days, I really struggled with the decision of whether or not I would make the complicated trip from here to South Bend to be with her family and the legions of choir people at her funeral. I knew that I wanted to be there more than anything, but I felt sort of guilty even thinking about spending so much money and time away from my work here. I know that funerals are for the consolation of the living rather than any benefit for the dead, so it just seemed sort of selfish for me to consider going. So I decided I wouldn’t go. Instead, I told myself that I would stand in solidarity with some of my colleagues here and the thousands and thousands of Haitian people who didn’t have the privilege of attending funerals when buildings collapsed on their loved ones last month. I decided that like them, I would just have to find a different way to say goodbye.

And I stuck with that decision for approximately four hours … during which time I realized exactly how much I need to be there. I’ll make the journey through Santo Domingo (since commercial flights are not flying regularly out of Port au Prince yet) and I’ll arrive in Chicago with my one hoodie sweatshirt and 1 pair of close toed shoes and hope there’s not a blizzard going on. I still don’t feel quite right about taking such obvious advantage of the privileges of wealth and my American passport, but I know it’s what I need to do. It makes me smile to think about the music that we’ll sing, and the choir reunion the likes of which will never happen again. It will be beautiful – and for once Gail won’t have to be in charge of every note and every cue and every cutoff. This time, she’ll just sit back and enjoy it all. As the Orthodox Christians say - Memory Eternal, Gail!