I never met Lavinia Gelineau. But like many people at USM, I won’t soon forget her. She is a fallen princess, sacrificed at the crossroads of two great iniquities of our era: war and domestic violence. Her short life passed through ours like a tornado over a tidy suburban house, laying bare the hidden sicknesses all around us and demanding that something be done. By the time you read this, Lavinia will be buried, but her short life will continue to challenge all who knew her, and even some who didn’t.
I first saw Lavinia almost exactly a year ago. She had waylaid my advisor, Professor of English Richard Swartz, outside the computer lab in Luther Bonney Hall. She was tearfully harranguing him in hushed tones. She was clutching at her hands and shaking. He was nodding patiently.
I was annoyed because I was busy, and had only a half hour to talk to Swartz. He knew I was waiting and here he was, letting some girl pester him who, I predicted, couldn’t handle her class load and was probably asking for an extention he would have granted without all the hysterics.
Swartz eventually joined me and we stepped into the elevator.
“She looked upset,” I said, curious to see whether my prediction was correct.
“Yes,” he said. “You know, that was Lavinia.” He didn’t have to use her last name. She’d been all over the news, along with her husband Christopher, who’d been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq a week before. With a pang of surprise and guilt, I came up with something to say.
“How is she doing?”
He regarded me stonily. The bell chimed as we passed a floor. “About as well as you’d expect,” he snapped.
I understood his discomfort, and I came to understand it better. Lavinia was, by all accounts, an exceptional and likable person, one of those people who people always speak well of.
About a week after the encounter in Luther Bonney, it fell on me to cover Christopher’s funeral, which was held on the basketball courts in Portland’s Sullivan gym. I found myself flanked on one side by an entire regiment of uniformed soldiers, and on the other by a sea of the Gelineaus’ loved ones-and feeling a little sleazy scribbling in my little notebook.
I was sitting next to Nancy Gish, professor of English. Gish is a stern woman, one of the University’s most notable feminists (she co-founded the women’s studies program 25 years ago), and my favorite teacher at USM. She told me how Lavinia had been one of her best students. We also talked about a recent death she’d had in her own family. Lavinia appeared, as graceful as she was severe, and walked slowly past us down the center aisle. She bowed her head at her husband’s coffin and stood in silence for what felt like 40 minutes, though I’m sure it was no longer than 30 seconds. I turned to the audience, and found them all staring reverently either at the back of Lavinia’s head or at their own knees. I realized that as much as I was a voyeur, the ceremony was itself a weird collision of the public and private. What was Lavinia saying to Christopher up there? In that vacuous silence, Professor Gish began sniffling.
Oh god, please don’t start crying, I thought to myself. I have no idea what to do if you start crying.
She started crying. I had no idea what to do. She covered her face and didn’t stop. I put my hand awkwardly on her shoulder. A woman behind me held out a tissue, which I transferred obediently. I was dumbfounded by the reversal of our usual roles: this strong woman, my superior in the scripted and comprehensible porometers of her classroom.
This was so unlike the first Iraq war, which was little more than a relatively expensive, green-tinted prime-time reality show. This war found its way back to us. It came for me as a woman’s shoulders quivering under my clumsy hand.
I’ve written about several deaths, as any reporter does, and I’ve interviewed grieving family members, and never made very much of it. Lavinia was important to the people around me, though, and her loss has sent shock waves that I can’t pretend, even as a journalist, the ultimate tourist, not to feel.
So to Lavinia’s family and friends, I offer my condolences and the promise that even those of us who knew her only indirectly are grieving too.