Hilary Teachout, R.I.P.

Hilary Dyson Teachout, the “Mrs. T” of this blog, suffered throughout the decade and a half of our life together from pulmonary hypertension, a rare and devastating illness that gnawed inexorably at her body without touching her soul. She was smart, funny, generous, and gallant, a perfect companion and the love of my life. Indeed, we fell in love at first sight, a thing I had never thought possible until, at the improbable age of forty-nine, it happened to me, followed in the shortest order that I could manage by a middle age full of shared joy. Alas, Hilary lacked the strength to survive the double-lung transplant that we had hoped would give her more life, and now she is gone.

Loss is the price of love: I knew from the start that I was likely to lose her too soon, though I was lucky beyond belief to have her for far longer than her doctors foresaw. But merely to know such a thing cannot begin to ready us for its coming. Raymond Aron said it: “There is no apprenticeship to misfortune. When it strikes us, we still have everything to learn.” I shall now try to learn the lesson of misfortune in a manner as worthy as possible of my beloved Hilary, who faced death as she faced life, with indomitable courage.

Here’s a special memory of my life with Hilary. She was struck by the last sentence:

For those of us still on earth, straining to make something of ourselves, it seems there is no weaning away from the people we love and lose: they are always there, dissolved into the completeness of eternity, waiting patiently—and, I suspect, indifferently—for the little resurrection that is memory.

I am blessed with many, many memories.

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Nancy LaMott sings a medley of “Good Thing Going” and “Not a Day Goes By,” written by Stephen Sondheim for the score of Merrily We Go Along: