In Memory of Clem Healy by Jasmine Nieves

I just want to thank-you for being who you are and fighting for what you believed in. I want to take a few moments to say that I appreciate the dedication that you had in continuing your studies. Your story is what makes us students stronger each day, the idea that no matter what obstacles we may encounter we are able to overcome them just like you had. In your poem you wrote, " I ask is there a place out there for me," and well the answer to that is pretty clear, yes Clem there is a place out there for you. Though it may not be right here with us at the moment, right above us there is, and heaven will open its arms to you indefinitely.

Dustin R. Tabeta

Before I post my journal entry, I'd like to say a few words to Clem's son, Gregory.

"Death is the most sophisticated form of beauty, and the most difficult to accept."
~ Simon Van Booy

Gregory, it was a pleasure to share a classroom with your father these past couple semester. His insight and wisdom was always well received and greatly appreciated. I was heartbroken when I heard the news. Thank you for sharing his poem and journal entry, they were lovely. I hope these words find you. My heavy heart goes out to you and your family.

My journal entry

Journal Entry #1
My first read through chapter one of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own was a confused one; a lost one filled with anxiety. I felt the narration haphazard, scattered, and puzzling. Then I realized the narrator’s puzzling ways was an emphasis to her thesis. The title refers to a woman and fiction and what is needed in order for those two elements to coexist (she speaks about writing, but I feel reading is just as sacred a process), but my personal reading of it (being on the train) proves her title is not closed to just women, but can ring true all who try to enjoy fiction. Fiction, the reading and writing of, allows one to leave the place they are in and enjoy another for a while, and a room of one’s own is a fundamental necessity. Chatter, television, traffic, and visuals are distractions that disable your full concentration. Even a silent room full of people can be distracting to some. It brings to mind one of my favorite author’s, Simon Van Booy. In his short story compilation, Love Begins in Winter, at the end of his book in a section titled, “How to Find a Story,” he writes:
I go somewhere (generally in winter when tourism lulls) with no idea whatsoever for a story. Then after I’m settled into a hotel, I begin walking the streets. Sometimes I walk all day - sometimes all night, sometimes in the rain (Stockholm for “The City of Windy Trees”), sometimes heat (Las Vegas for “The Missing Statues”) and occasionally in heavy snow (Quebec City for “Love Begins in Winter”). This is one of the most enjoyable parts to building a story because the key is NOT to look for a story but to simply be open to the idea of wandering around and just lingering - like a peculiar odor…For a place to yield a story, I must travel to it alone, always alone. If I am to meet a friend there, it must be someone who will allow me to be alone and who understands the need for silence and total secrecy. All writers live a secret life. All writers are spies…Only in solitude do I realize the true value of life.
He continues, reverberating Woolf’s necessity for privacy. I returned to my apartment and gave the chapter another go, but this time in the solitude. It must have been the combination of having read it once before and the comfort of my apartment that allowed me to better digest the work. Woolf’s character is continually distracted by some entity or another which bars any though process to fully develop. Reading is the same; your mind is engaged and developing thoughts about what is being read, and for distractions to pop every now and again forbids any engagement or development of thought. Woolf maybe should have began her book with a disclaimer; a sort of subtle forewarning: Listen to the Title or something to that degree. She ends the chapter with thoughts about entrapment: “how unpleasant it is to be locked out…how it is worse perhaps to be locked in” and continues with ideas of the lack of tradition and how writers must create some for themselves. It seems as if Van Booy is a student of Woolf’s essay; she says one needs money and a room of one’s own and Van Booy has just that: money to travel (neither locked in or locked out) and a room of his own in every city he visits.


--
Dustin R. Tabeta

Remembering Clem Healy
Post 2

Eulogy for a Father – Clem Healy

By Gregory Healy

The following was sent to me by Gregory along with his dad's essay / journal entry on Virginia Woolf -- as well as this photograph. Gregory agreed I might post his eulogy to his father here, along with the poem at the end, which Clem wrote. -- Prof. Hinton

I've been pondering for days what to say about my father. The "things" done are external measures of the man and I will not repeat what an obituary can detail.

I've spent some days reading his school papers and am proud to report repeated comments by professors appreciating his incredibly dry humor, creativity, enthusiasm, honesty and admiration of his desire and commitment to get things right.

I've smiled at the happy memories that my friends have sent reminding me of my dad's willingness to share our household - Fall Sunday afternoons watching/lamenting the Giants while eating home made chili, Spring & Summer fishing trips on Long Island Sound where, on occasion, we even caught a fish and our home’s back door that friends knew was left locked.

Most of you know that dad had lived with Seren & myself for the past 2 1/2 years and it is time for which I am very grateful to God. Dad spent time traveling to Austin to see Martia & her family. He spent weeks at Carrie & Joe’s enjoying Daniel, Jonathan & Joanne while continuing to work on papers. He roamed about New York City getting to explore museums & institutions he’d not had time for in years past. When I could drag him away from his school-work I was able to take him to see the Giants, Knicks & Mets. He still hated the Yankees. I am thankful that, as a family, we are not wracked with regrets of things not done or words left unsaid.

I think the truest measure of my dad as a man is found in a paper he'd written last year for a class titled "Journey to Redemption". In it he answered a question I'd asked him a couple of years ago - how was he able to beat an addition that has felled so many others? I will read some of his words that provide the answer and also tell us what my dad thought was important and lasting...

"How did I manage to come to terms with the fact that the path to a better life required letting to of my personal support system? It had become clear that the real choice was a loving relationship with my three children, or a love affair with alcohol. I chose the children. It took a long time to regain my children’s respect (I like to believe I had never had lost their love). I give thanks to my higher power on a daily basis, and there is no fear of loosing my relationship with my children and 10 grandchildren."

Yes, dad, there is no fear of loosing your relationship with us.

****

A Poem written by Clem

When I have fears I’ll die before my time,

That feeling the Grim Reaper’s close at hand,

I find the need to put it all in rhyme,

Before my pen is stilled by Death’s command.

When looking at the sky or out to sea,

I wonder at the secrets that they hold,

I ask is there a place out there for me,

or will my love for you be left untold.

And will my sonnets words fall to the ground,

Just buried by my side and left unread,

my poetry, my love, my praise, unfound.

as with my last remains-my passion dead.

last words of love, last words of lover lost,

as when a stone into the sea is tossed.

Remembering Clem Healy
Post 1

Clement Healy -- or Clem, as he liked to be called -- told me at our first class that he was pursuing his dream of another college degree, in spite of health difficulties and a speech impediment caused by cancer. We had a wonderful email exchange the weekend after our first class -- which I would soon learn was to be his last. On Labor Day weekend he acquired a pneumonia, and this strong and resilient man passed on. His son, Gregory Healy, found this first reading-journal assignment completed in his father's room, and Gregory asked me to accept it. He knew his Dad would want his English paper turned in.

And -- Clem gets an "A".