When Dan Fuller died, someone directed me to the poem by Bertolt Brecht.  Mourners had dusted it off to memorialize another selfless, departed, working-class leader, Dave Cline.  It is a deceptively simple repetition of a few lines.  The unity of life and death is the message.

What has happened has happened. The water
You have poured into the wine, you can
Not pour back out, but
Everything changes. You can make a new start
With your last breath.

I raged internally against the idea: “I just saw him on a ventilator.  How can anyone say ‘make a new start with your last breath’?”   As I worked through my grief, I began to understand.  All of Dan’s doings and qualities are the things that have happened.  Now as we grieve and memorialize him at his last breath, he passes to a different realm—the realm of memory and inspiration.  It is a secular interpretation of the legend of resurrection.  That is why Brecht evokes the Christian imagery of water and wine.  It comforted me to know that what Dan had been and had done lives on.  As my own final days come upon me, I want these memoirs to re-ignite that new start for Dan Fuller — and for me.

I hope that my boys, my wife, and my readers now know something about what it really takes to make social progress.  The passion of my days in college and in Milwaukee was a beginning.  Then, I often tried cover for mistaken frameworks with heroic effort.  Of course, we can’t discount the enthusiasm and energy of youth.  They have always been a dynamic and leading force for change.  However, wisdom also has its place.

As I settled in as a father and husband, I became more integrated with my community.  The causes that I took up were inspired by trying to help people that I actually knew.   We need life-long commitments to a set of values and beliefs.  The people themselves are the movers of history.  We can usually work to understand the possibilities and give guidance.  That is our duty.  If we misunderstand and sow confusion, that can always be corrected.  Keep the faith that a new day is coming.  I want these memoirs to create a new start for me, a fortunate son who kept trying and learning.

Now that we can appreciate legacy, lessons, and transcendence, we give deeper meaning to the aphorism: “May you live forever and may I never die.”