Along the Oregon Trail: First & Last Words

“An Austrian tour guide once observed that saying farewell to a group of American tourists she’d known for only two weeks is a lot like grief, for it’s unlikely she and this random bunch would ever meet again. The originality and sincerity of her goodbye and that of others I’ve recorded has remained with me. I wasn’t witness to the fact, but I feel certain that Gypsy Rose Lee, the exotic dancer, never forgot Eleanor Roosevelt’s sign off: ‘May your bare ass always be shining.’ Its boldness and originality are what make it memorable.”—Skip Eisiminger

Skip the B.S.

By Dr. Skip Eisiminger

1. “Tell all I’ll see them on the other side. It wasn’t bad—just went to sleep. I love you.”—Martin Toler, Sago, WV coal miner who died of asphyxiation, January 2006

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Hubris)—March 2024—A psychology professor once told a class I was part of that “liminal statements” often have some memorable significance, poignancy, and/or humor, whether the speaker is arriving or departing. 

The examples she gave us were so moving that they convinced me to keep my own list for future reference. These now include a potential list of my own last words such as: “I hope what I just said isn’t ungrammatical—please excuse the double negative.” Or: “I have no idea what Joyce’s Finnegans Wake means; I never got past the first page. Truth be told, I never finished Moby Dick, either.” All kidding aside, as the light dims, the following eight-word sentence is what I’ve memorized to tell my German wife of six decades, “I apologize, my love, for leaving you alone.” If those words stick in my throat, my proposed exit line will be what the Germans call a “staircase joke,” a great line you wish you’d spoken as the door shuts behind you.

Actual parting words I’ve had the mixed privilege to hear include:

• my mother’s words to my father, “I’ll wait for you in heaven.”
• my engineer father’s words to his three children, “The Cougar Dam [whose picture was on the wall at the foot of his bed] is the thing I’m proudest of.”
• my maternal grandfather’s words, “I gotta see a man about a horse.”
• my father-in-law, “I’ll help with the beds after I fill out my lottery form.”
• my mother-in-law, “I hope this trip doesn’t take too long.”
• and the last email from an old friend with Parkinson’s, “mmmmmmmmmm . . . .”

After I learned that Elliot, a bright but withdrawn student in chemical engineering, had taken his own life days before graduation, I gathered the essays he’d written for me and discovered that each dealt with suicide. His essay on Linda’s role in Death of a Salesman concluded with Linda’s graveside words to her husband, several lines of which he quoted from memory: “I made the last payment on the house today, Willy. Today, dear. And there’ll be nobody home. We’re free.” After the registrar informed me of Elliot’s death (“Elliot ___ has withdrawn from the university.”), everyone I spoke to seemed to know that he’d slept with a pistol under his pillow but me, and I still feel like an accomplice.

II. “A good lather is half the shave.”—Anonymous

In December of 1991, the legendary South-African civil-rights advocate Desmond Tutu addressed the graduating class at the University of South Carolina, a class in which our daughter received her BA and our son his MA, with one of the best opening lines I’ve heard. Said the gracious Episcopal bishop to an assembly of Southern Baptists, “The God in me greets the God in you.” As soon as he’d finished his encomium, I scrawled the following on the back of my program: “The God in me says, ‘God be with the God in you.” Later at home I revised this to: “Whether you are Christian     Muslim, or Jew,/the God in me      greets the God in you.”

It’s not a couplet I’d use in a secular classroom, but I have used it with audiences in various interfaith and multicultural settings.

A good opener is doubly important with children, especially those who’ve never met their visitor. One of my favorite ice breakers requires me to wade into the middle of an assembled group with hands cupped saying, “Gimme some hungry chicken. Here’s some chicken feed, now peck.” Before I know it, kids are falling over each other trying to peck the “feed” in my open hands. It’s the active role of the imaginary chickens, I think, that makes it work. 

With a retirement-home audience, I won’t offer them any chicken feed, but after an opening joke, I might say, “I’m glad you’ve kept the twinkles in your wrinkles.” Looking at my face, they realize I’m a brother from another mother, for I have as many wrinkles as they do. These openers are a little like waving to a passing trucker or locomotive engineer: I flash my headlights and he/she flashes back. I pretend to operate my “airhorn,” and he/she responds with the real thing. The chemistry is immediate and magical.

Once a colleague stopped by my open office door as I was grading papers at my desk and said, “Don’t get up.” To which I replied, “Okay, don’t sit down.” It sounds rude, but my smile convinced him to continue with his unstated business.

III. “XO means kisses and hugs. OX means hugs and kisses. OXEN is just the plural.”—Anja Fraiser

An Austrian tour guide once observed that saying farewell to a group of American tourists she’d known for only two weeks was a lot like grief, for it was unlikely she and this random bunch would ever meet again. The originality and sincerity of her goodbye and that of others I’ve recorded has remained with me. I wasn’t witness to the fact, but I feel certain that Gypsy Rose Lee, the exotic dancer, never forgot Eleanor Roosevelt’s sign off: “May your bare ass always be shining.” Its boldness and originality are what make it memorable. One might even say that the two women were sisters from another mister. Other memorable sign-offs include:

• The President of William and Mary telling his students, staff, and faculty goodbye after he was fired, “Go, tribe, and hark on the gale.” He maintained his firing was unjust, and he wanted people to listen to the facts before they made up their minds.
• A yuppie New Yorker telling his girlfriend as they went separate ways, “Plutardo, Babe.” I haven’t found “plutardo” in any dictionary, but I think the speaker meant, “I’ll see you later.”
• A new-age minister telling his shocked congregation as he finished his first sermon, “Can I get a hell yeah?” The response, I’ve been told, grew stronger every time he used it.
• Countless people during the COVID era telling friends to “Stay positive and test negative.” Sadly, thousands ignored the advice.
• And some computer nerds using the binary “bye,” “0100000010,” in a text message. You won’t find me using that one.

Years ago, I thanked a young waiter for his excellent service, and his reply was, “No problem.”

Puzzled, I said, “I know—there was no problem.”

About that time, the manager walked up and said, “What’s the problem?” The problem, in my opinion, is that we’ve forgotten, “You’re welcome,” and replaced it with, “Don’t mention it,” “Not at all,” or a flat repetition of “Thank you.”

In my last year of teaching, I was introduced to a new faculty member named Nic Black, but in the days that followed, I occasionally called him “Rick.” Once, when I realized my error and still had enough time to correct myself, I apologized and said, “I’m sorry, Nic.” Said Nic with a wink, “That’s Okay, Chip: at least you got the -ick right.” His broad smile and sincere tone told me that he forgave his antiquarian colleague with the porous memory. I told him that if he had a human antonym, she or he would be one of those people who only wave back.

IV. “Hello, I must be going.”—Groucho Marx

Call me morbid, but among my favorite epitaphs are those that sound like a wise, polite voice speaking from the grave. Some of the best include:

• “Excuse my dust.” Humorist Dorothy Parker
• “Read me. Read my mind.” Poet May Swenson
• “Nothing is writ in stone, even this.” Anonymous
• “If I don’t wake, please let me sleep.” Anonymous
• “Skip the push-ups; master the push-back [from the supper table].” Anonymous
• “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” Anonymous

I was disappointed to learn that the epitaphs W.C. Fields proposed for himself like, “All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia,” were rejected by someone in favor of “W.C. Fields 1880-1946.” Missing, of course, is the humanity and humor of Fields’ proposals.

V. “Such insomnia!”—Herman Bing

The 50 or so suicide notes I’ve collected over the last 40 years often fall into one of two categories: “It was your fault; I hope you feel guilty,” and, “It was my decision; don’t blame yourself.” Here’s an example of the first:

“Sleep Good Tonite!!! I always loved you—when things went a little bad[,] you didn’t love me—Very Simple[.] You gave me everything I ever had—So you take it now[.] Love (That you Don’t have) Karen”

Here’s an example of the second:

“I must end it. There’s no hope left. I’ll be at peace. No one had anything to do with this. My decision totally.” [Freddie Prinze.]

Jim Harrison, who’d once considered suicide, discovered that beauty took his courage away as when his year-old daughter’s red robe hanging from a doorknob shouted, “Stop!” Fortunately for Harrison’s daughter and his readers, he heeded the robe. 

I know that as Anne Sexton said, “White picket fences won’t keep the nightmares out,” but as the mother of a son who’d taken his own life said, “If you have to do it, for God’s sake, make it look like an accident!”

In 1982, Dr. Philip Zeltner, 37, a philosophy professor who’d been denied tenure at the University of South Carolina, walked into the office of the President exclaiming that “when life’s food is bad and the portions are small,” suicide is a viable option. He then fatally shot himself. Anyone old enough to read this should know that the quality of life often varies from minute to minute, and death is seldom the only option. I suspect this young philosopher, who’d recently been named the university’s “Teacher of the Year,” was one good “meal” away from saving his life. A teaching position at a small liberal arts college without USC’s publication pressure might have been the “meal” that saved a good man from himself.

Nevertheless, as Friedrich Nietzsche, who died at age fifty-five of pneumonia complicated by a stroke and dementia, confided, “The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it, one gets successfully through many a bad night.” Personally, I hope to die quietly in my sleep just minutes after my wife dies in her sleep, but the suicide option is a consolation.

To order copies of Skip Eisiminger’s Letters to the Grandchildren (Clemson University Digital Press), click on the book cover below or contact: Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing, Strode Tower, Box 340522, Clemson SC 29634-0522. For Wordspinner: Mind-Boggling Games for Word Lovers, click on the book cover.