Such a deeply meaningful time, returning after two years to Modum Bad, where my wife Leigh McCullough and I last lived together, before her final illness. Modum Bad was for us both challenge and fulfillment, the finest community devoted to the nourishment of life that either of us had ever known. We looked forward to much learning and some teaching, living through the last stages of our working lives. It felt at once an adventure and a return to a deep source. Modum Bad's motto, En kilde til liv, a source of life. Seeds of relationship were sown that continue to bear fruit. I have written elsewhere an essay (published by Modum Bad and available here in Reckonings) gathering some strands of Modum Bad's story. Here I want to share the words of a dear Norwegian friend, Notto Thelle, who offered them on Friday, September 14, in memory of Leigh.
Memorial service for Leigh McCullough
Friday 14 September 2012
Olavskirken, Modum Bad, Vikersund, Norway
Notto R. Thelle
Dear friends and colleagues of Leigh; dear John and Kelly.
We have listened to the words of wisdom from Ecclesiastes; that to every thing there is a season: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. Many of us remember Leigh as a woman of all seasons, and somehow this is an occasion when several seasons come together. We are gathered here at St Olav’s Chapel to bid farewell to a beloved woman, to create a space for our grief and sadness, but also to remember and honor, and to celebrate and express our gratitude for a long and meaningful life. Leigh McCullough was born on June 5, 1945 and died on June 7, 2012.
Who was Leigh? I cannot speak for all, I primarily know her as a good friend and as John’s companion for the last few years here at Modum.
There are others who may speak with more authority about her professional merits. Let me just mention that for many people she was the psychotherapy researcher famed for her contributions to the exploration of affect in psychotherapy. She received her PhD in clinical psychology from Boston College in 1982, was Associate Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Psychotherapy Research Program at Harvard's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a visiting professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Trondheim, Norway), as well as the Research Director here at Modum Bad Psychiatric Center.
She is the author of several books, including Changing Character and Treating Affect Phobia. Her last ambition before she died, heavily struck with ALS, I have heard, was to complete her book Forbidden Feelings, where she wanted to integrate her knowledge helping people to get in touch with their inner resources and restore their dignity. As it was written in on the web page of the Norwegian Association for Intensive Dynamic Short-term Therapy, “Her focus of research and theoretical innovations will remain as independent contributions and as an inspiration within the professional community.”
But Leigh was much more than the professional therapist and researcher. Her work was seasoned with so many unique qualities. She was a person who got involved in other people’s lives. Somehow she left her traces in our minds, in our emotions, in our relationships.
I challenged a few of her friends and colleagues to mention one or two characteristic features. It was easy to find, but difficult to limit, because there were so many aspects of her personality. If you say one thing, you have to add a number of others to balance. Here are a few characteristics, and every one of them have multiple meanings: energetic, helpful, inspiring, enthusiastic, intense, iron will, eager, ambitious, hardworking, present, curious, caring, persistent, demanding, encouraging, supportive. You may add other words to the list, but most of us would nod and say yes, she had all these qualities and more.
As a prepared this speech I discovered that a missed few words, which were not mentioned, but which stand very clear in my mind:
Leigh was such a beautiful woman, tall and slender with a natural bodily / physical presence and confidence. And she had such a sense for beauty: her taste for details when she created her home here at Modum, the way she dressed, food and the table she prepared for guests, the way she spoke about things. And not the least: Leigh was very romantic. At least the Leigh I got to know. The reason is not only that I met her with John and observed all the romantic expressions in that relationship. She was so romantic about Modum Bad as well, this beautiful little psychiatric village in the woods of Norway where all people were so kind, where anyone could come at have dinner together at Café Thaulow without any barriers between professional positions. Well, in some ways it was true, and we appreciated what she said, but we knew very well that it was somewhat rosy. I also remember her fascination one time we were invited to dinner together, and I arrived skiing across the fields. She found it so romantic and often talked about it - it seemed to her almost incredible that such a life was possible.
On the other hand, she could cut through our romantic enthusiasm when she did not agree. I remember clearly the first meeting in our English Literature Group. We started exactly four years ago, with Obama’s autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, as our first book. The entire group was thrilled with romantic dreams about change. Leigh was skeptical. She liked what he said, but sensed that there was too much eloquence and too little substance in his words. She would prefer Hillary Clinton, not only because she was a woman, but because she sensed that she had the political experience and willpower to realize things
It is a terrible shock and surprise when a person who is so much alive and so indispensable, is suddenly struck with the worst possible disease, ALS. Why? Leigh had still so many things to accomplish, so many initiatives to take, so much to complete.
We don’t have the answers. There are so many riddles in life we don’t understand. But I would conclude my talk with a few reflections about things that we don’t understand: is human life part of a cosmic order where every person has a destiny and meaning? Or do we merely seek comfort in philosophy and religion in order to create a clarity that does not exist?
I could quote the Bible and argue that faith is a universe of meaning that opens up for a deep confidence that we and all things are part of a divine plan, that nothing can separate us from the love of God, and that an expression of this confidence is also the freedom to protest, to question and doubt, or even accuse God of forgetting his promises. Somehow this is where many of us stand.
But I feel that Leigh might have preferred another way to come to terms with these riddles of life. Poetry perhaps. John told me that poetry played an important part in their correspondence when they began to investigate their relationship. One of those poems was Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” which John has shared with us today. It is a fascinating poem with many potential interpretations, I think. Some people would say that it is not suitable for a Christian church. “You don’t have to be good.” “You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.” Isn’t goodness and repentance what Christianity is about?
Well, it could be read in another way, perhaps as a confession or proclamation from a person who is so keen on success, so ambitious, so focused on doing her or his best, but realizing at the same time that life itself is full of grace, that our real humanity is held up by something which is greater than our ambitions and accomplishments.
I don’t know exactly what ”the soft animal of your body” is, but I read it as something which is deeply ingrained in our deepest humanity, in body and mind, almost like the instinctive drive that makes the wild geese follow their journeys year after year, leaving and coming. The world goes on ever-changing without end, with despairs and hopes. But in the depth of things there is a calling, a message about meaning and direction. In the poem the call comes from the wild geese who are returning home, insistently “announcing your place / in the family of things.” To be a true human person is commit oneself to one’s place in the family of things, to accept the limitations of life, and to live fully according to the calling one has heard.
I will conclude by adding a related metaphor from a Norwegian poet, Olav H. Hauge, who has a similar type of wisdom in his description of small children playing with pieces of broken pots and cups of porcelain,. He describes a time when children had to create their own toys, from pine cones, sticks and stones, and whatever they found. In their play the broken piece of a pot seems to give more joy than the whole pot gave its original owner:
A piece with blue roses,
a tiny shining shard
becomes in their eyes something
more than they were.
On the fragment of my broken life
I found a soft line,
but what the potter intended
I shall never find out.
The poet does not claim to have answer to the riddles of life, or to see the whole pattern. He knows the biblical metaphor of the creator who makes human life from clay, like a great potter forming his pots and drawing his images with beautiful lines. The poet sees the soft lines on a piece of the broken pot, and realizes that even a broken life is part of a greater design.
We thank God for Leigh McCullough’s life. We miss her so much. We don’t understand why she had to die so prematurely. But each of us has seen some of the soft lines in her life, enough to envision the greater design. We will keep her in our memories, grateful that we got to know her. May she rest in peace.