RIP Professor Jackson

I opened my e-mail late this evening to find an e-mail from Dean Quinley:

To Pomona College Students:

Dean Quinley

I only ever had Professor Jackson for one class. I took Greek Religion from him second semester of Freshman year. It was a tumultuous semester for me, and he seemed like a deeply troubled person. He collected playing cards that he found on the ground and half-jokingly compared his habit to the Greek tradition of turning to Oracles for clues about the future. He said frequently that all this looking to oracles and worshipping Gods was how the Greeks manifested the human tendency to look to the supernatural for signs when desperate for an explanation for the meaningless pain of life. He told us that there was nobody who believed in God so much as the man trapped in a desperate situation. Somehow I felt like maybe he was speaking from personal experience; and at that extremely homesick and lovelorn low point in my life, as I looked to the next song on my randomized iTunes playlist for a “sign” about my future, I sort of identified with him.

I remember that he really liked my song Postmortem Peaches. He told me that I had talent and that he hoped to hear more of my music. I always meant to get a copy of my second CD to him, but now I guess I won’t get that opportunity.

The last conversation I had with him was at the very beginning of this past Spring 2004 Semester. He was walking up the stairs of Pearsons, his characteristic headphones wrapped around his shoulders. I asked him how his break had been and he smiled his nervous, endearing smile and said it had gone “as expected.” He asked me how mine had been before I had a chance to fully process his response, and I regaled him with the tale of my jaw surgery and all the lovely narcotics I’d been prescribed for the pain. I joked that I’d enjoyed being on Percocet so much that my mother had been forced to take it away from me after I started referring to it as “The Precious.” He lauged as heartily as I think I’d ever seen him laugh, and then we parted ways as we were both late for other engagements.

I’m writing this not because I’m irreversably scarred by his passing. I didn’t know him well enough to be sobbing into my pillow. Still, I think he would want to be remembered by people whose lives he influenced, and I feel as though I should preserve what little I know of his life. He was a good professor, a kind and funny if extremely odd man. He will surely be missed.