Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Jonathan Dobher says: My wife Barbara was intellectually accomplished and had a gift for language that was unique. She was the only American I have ever seen mistaken by the French, in France, for being French. She also developed the perfect regional Arabic accent of our village when we were in the Peace Corps in Tunisia
You can also grieve for former spouse
By Jonathan Dobrer
I do not know how properly to mourn and grieve for Barbara, my former wife, who died unexpectedly last week.
The world does not present me, or others like me, with many role models for bearing and sharing the pain of the loss of someone to whom I once was married. Notice, I do not say, "Someone I once loved." Love does not have to be put in the past tense. Just because two people do not remain married does not mean that their love disappears into the ether. All that made her smart, interesting and commendable as a human being can survive divorce.
Most loves don't, and that is a shame. I guess many divorced people, like teenagers trying to get ready to leave home, try to make the separation easier by fighting and often demonizing the other. Most of the time those separating teens find their way back to their formerly "clueless" parents. Sadly, the majority of divorced people don't. The best they usually achieve is civility. And while that is not nothing, it falls short of what could be.
Few are able to remember and cherish the characteristics and the character of the people they married. However, like teenagers who re-find their parents, without ever moving back in, divorced people can feel love for each other, knowing that they cannot ever again live together. They can appreciate and celebrate their former partner in marriage and eternal partner in parenting.
Barbara was a person of extraordinary talent and grace. She was intellectually accomplished and had a gift for language that was unique. She was the only American I have ever seen mistaken by the French, in France, for being French. She also developed the perfect regional Arabic accent of our village when we were in the Peace Corps in Tunisia.
She had a pretty amazing life - from being secretary of the Arab Student Union at University of Southern California (a rare achievement for a non-Arab gentile) to marriage to a Jewish guy (me) who wouldn't get on an airplane, to her final love: a former Marine who builds and flies his own plane. She loved and accepted all kinds of people. Most importantly she passed on her great love of life, interest in all kinds of people and kindness to all people to our son Adam. Her affectionate nature lives on in him.
She was a wonderful, passionate and compassionate teacher who brought out the best in her students. She nursed and nurtured high school students from the ghetto in Richmond, Calif., to the barrio in San Fernando. Students told not even to take a foreign language won competitions against private schools and Beverly Hills High. One got a full scholarship to Stanford, while a number of others became language teachers.
That she touched so many so deeply is demonstrated to me when I meet a former student who, seeing my unusual last name, asks if I'm related to Mrs. Dobrer (now Saylor) who taught French. I'm always delighted to say, "Yes." They inevitably tell me what a wonderful, affirming and inspirational teacher she was. "I know," I tell them proudly.
They often seem confused when they learn that we were divorced. "How could I be proud and positive?" they wonder. Why not? Why should we assume anger as our default position? Why not understand that all of life's great transitions have painful stages but can be followed by peace? What in her life and character should I not both mourn and celebrate?
I did not know how to love her when we were young and, as a former spouse, I do not know how properly to mourn her now. I only know that both love and grief, however imperfectly expressed, are real and eternal and can survive both divorce and death.
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Jonathan Dobrer is a professor of comparative religion at the University of Judaism.
