On Thursday morning, I received an email that my best friend, Jim Kenkel, Professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University, was found dead. He apparently had suffered at heart attack in his sleep the day before. He had just turned 55.
There is huge emptiness in my life.
Jim and I met while we were pursuing doctorates in applied linguistics at the University of Illinois in the 1980s. And, almost every year since then, we presented papers and published papers. Our most accessible paper on the nets is We're Prescriptivists, Isn't Everyone? It is our "left" take on the value of learning "Standard English.
I now will never be able to write another paper with Jim, and we had several more to write.
I have no idea how many other people have close collaborations. I know that without Jim I could not have written the papers that made it possible for me to become a full professor.
In the last two years, we used Skype. On Wednesday, he did not answer. I figured he was out.
Jim was not as politically engaged as I am, but we had very similar political views and we would comment on the world's events.
We would also share our thoughts on what was happening in our field of second language acquisition and the teaching of writing to both native and non-native speakers. We would describe our joys and frustrations as university professors. We had developed our own text for the teaching of English grammar to future teachers. There is no one to continue such discussions.
Jim and I had other interests in common. In the 1990's, we always presented at a conference on the teaching of in Pennsylvania so that we would be able to visit Gettysburg. We both were Civil War buffs. in the past twenty years we took at least three trips together exploring battlefields in the East, West, and Trans-Mississippi. The last two years we took part in the weekend study group tour of Chickamauga. We are never going to do another Civil War tour.
Jim and I shared books about the Civil War. He told me about William Blight's Race and Reunion. We are never going to share what book the other must read.
I will never see the sun room he had just built and he was so proud of. We will never sit in that room drinking a wine that one of us had discovered or a wonderful Kentucky small batch bourbon.
Jim studied French in college, and I learned French while living in France for two years. One of our future plans was to vacation in France together. That is not going to happen now.
In October my mother died. She was 87 and had lived a full life. She was in hospice care for over 10 months. My friend Jim was only 55 and his life was not complete. There was no indication of this sudden death. He had much more to do. WE had much left to do.
There is a huge emptiness in my life today.