I visited Ren Dodson a few weeks ago, just after his initial diagnosis, but before the planned treatments had begun. He looked like he always did, fit and healthy (I learned that day that he was 74, and my jaw dropped—it was a good decade older than I would have guessed). He complained that the pain medication had taken the edge off his sharp mind, but it wasn’t readily apparent to me that day. He was obviously concerned, but he spoke optimistically.
About two weeks later, I spoke to Ren on the phone; he was in his hospital bed in the city. It was a very different conversation. On the phone, his voice was much weaker, tamped down by intravenous painkillers, and he was more emotional. We revisited a topic he raised at our earlier sit-down, one that was clearly growing in importance to him. He had told me that, regardless, he wouldn’t be returning to the column he so loved to write—his illness would be life-changing, one way or the other, he said, and either way he couldn’t commit to the weekly deadline he had never missed.
But he wanted to write a farewell to his readers. More to the point, he wanted me to write it for him, since he worried that his normally razor-sharp writing skills were fading as strange chemicals coursed through his body. He had learned a few things since his diagnosis, and he wanted to share them.
I told him we would run “best of” columns for the time being, regardless. I held out hope that Ren would rally and change his mind when he was feeling better, seeing the column as therapeutic, and I didn’t want to fill his chair, so to speak, quite so quickly in any case. Meanwhile, we made plans for an interview, maybe a series of interviews, to allow him a chance to say a proper goodbye in The Press. The next time he and Susan came back to their beloved house in Water Mill, perhaps, or I would make a trip into the city.
The interview never happened—Ren’s decline was unexpectedly steep, and he didn’t make it back to Water Mill, nor was he well enough for a visit from anyone but those closest to him, his family. He died Friday in hospice care, with those loved ones around him.
Cancer is evil. It gave Ren two unwanted, terrifying gifts: a death sentence, and enough time to think about it. In that brief conversation on the phone, Ren seemed at peace with what was to come, and, characteristically, he had a few observations to make that he thought could help others. He didn’t share them—it would wait for our interview.
Now, Ren is left with me having to speak for him—and I think he would hate that.
Ren was a good friend, and he always amazed me with his ability to find something interesting to write about every week. The list spanned his life, his memories, his observations of past and present, injustice he saw around him, the sometimes silliness of local government. He was passionate about many topics: Susan and MacDuff (who was a collaborator on some columns), of course, but also such diverse topics as bike lanes, the mistreatment of Latino immigrants, and the sometimes coarse nature of modern culture. His columns could be provocative, and they could be whimsical, and they could be moving. Rare is the columnist who can pull off that kind of range.
His columns always seemed to start with a question: How has the teacher-student relationship changed over the years? Why is the town so slow to create new bike lanes? How would MacDuff view the world? Ren always had questions, and even if he didn’t settle on an answer, he shared the exploration with us. It was a reliably good ride, every week. I was his first reader (his columns barely needed editing, except for a gentle suggestion now and then), and his biggest fan.
Reynolds Dodson was an award-winning columnist, and The Press was fortunate to have such a remarkable chronicler of local life for 16 years. As an editor, I will feel his absence on this page. As a friend, I will feel it even more deeply.
I don’t know what insights Ren would have shared about his final few weeks and the realizations he came to. Cancer robbed us of that, too.
I do know this: I’m happy to know that Ren finally has answers to all the questions, every one of them. Even though I suspect that won’t stop him from continuing to ask them.
on Sep 14, 2012