A Word from Wilma
"We are still together."
TITLE: A Word from Wilma: "We are still together."
AUTHOR: Wilma Dykeman Stokely
SOURCE: Wilma Dykeman, Explorations, 1984, Wakestone Books.
PERMISSION to use granted by the author's heirs.
When faced with a decision, a tragedy or a dilemma, more than one person has been known to ask, “What Would Wilma Do?”
Wilma answered that question for herself in 1977. At that time, besides serving as Tennessee’s first female state historian and leading a meaningful Bicentennial celebration, Wilma wrote a weekly column for The Knoxville News-Sentinel and was beloved throughout East Tennessee. When her husband of 37 years, James R. Stokely, Jr., died suddenly of a heart attack, she went public with her grief. Her resulting column resonated with so many readers that it became her most-read column and still arouses emotional responses today.
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“Three times I have reached for the telephone to ask my editor for a reprieve from writing for a few weeks. But my hand was stayed.
“Exactly a week ago, from the day I am writing, on Monday afternoon, I was composing my weekly column for this paper. A few minutes later my perceptive co-author, my wisest counselor, my mentor, and my love read my words, offered a penetrating suggestion and his daily (indeed, almost hourly) words of approval and affection. A few hours later, he fell on the grass beside his garden and was gone.
“Thus a week becomes a lifetime, and the world is changed, and for a few people on this mysterious planet nothing will be the same again. Yes, the oak outside the window will stand, the garden will bear, summer will flourish and wane, other lives will continue their familiar routine – but all diminished because he is not here. And I shall continue, too, diminished by his absence, but better than I could ever have been without his presence for a little while.
“We met in a garden and we parted in a garden. I was picking flowers in my mother's garden in Asheville on that August Sunday morning when Thomas Wolfe's sister and her husband drove into our yard with two young men, "Stokely brothers from Newport, Tenn." One of them wore a white shirt, open at the collar with rolled-up sleeves, against which his smooth skin was a golden tan and his eyes were the clear blue of sea or sky, and before that day was finished he had asked me if I liked books and the woods and the final question – Beethoven. Two weeks later I canceled my career in New York. In October we were married. I believe there never was a couple more destined for each other.
“Very few people knew the true dimensions of James' life. In a world where outer appearances are judged as reality, he invested more and more of his time in inner riches. In a time when bigger is considered best and power seems a prize worth any sacrifice, he cherished the fragile spirit, the delicate creativity, that flows from an eternal power. In a period when the loud and the self-proclaiming receive the world's awards, he was quiet and self-forgetful.
“He was also a person of immense power. With all his gentleness he was capable of deep anger. Anger against injustice – injustice in any form or dimension – led him into some lonely valleys. He never talked of those experiences because he had no martyr's complex – too much laughter to be a martyr. And when his family or friends or society caught up with his farsighted vision, he never suggested an attitude of "I-told-you-so." He was too busy looking ahead to other horizons. In all his patience he seethed with powerful impatience. Impatience with trivia – the second-rate in our cultural, spiritual, educational, political, industrial, individual and social lives – led him to some lonely pinnacles. This grieved him, not because he minded being alone, but because any riches of mind or spirit or body that he discovered he wanted to share with everyone else. And every day was an adventure of discovery for him.
“I never met anyone who savored more deeply the potential of the moment. Whether we were in a strange land or here in our own familiar mountains, whether we were listening to the first katydids of summer or the Eroica Symphony, whether we were among exciting famous people or talking with old-timers or were alone together, to whatever we were doing he brought full appreciation, passion, imagination.
“People sometimes asked if he was disconcerted by my writing, my career. How little they knew him! He had no identity crisis, no need to narrow anyone else's life to enhance his own. Indeed, one of the purposes of his life seemed to be to make sure that everyone – no matter race or sex, social status or creed – should have not only opportunity but encouragement to be not only good but best.
“And he was the best. Funny and sad, uniquely innocent and infinitely sophisticated, he balanced the world of nature and the world of books and dwelt in a realm of special goodness. He would not have liked that word, it would embarrass him. But he was good. We shall rarely see his like again.
“A week ago he left on one of the few trips we have not taken together. But he is not wholly away – and I am not wholly here. We are still together.”