Arnold Zwicky's Blog

I have been going over about 50 pages of draft stuff for my lawyer: revisions of my trusteeship, my will, the advance health care instructions, and a durable power of attorney — the product of a session with the lawyer last month.  Oh my. Well, it all seems to say what I said I wanted, but of course, in careful legalese and with provisos for all sorts of circumstances I had never even contemplated.

And there in the advance health care section was a Treat with Dignity section that begins:

If I should suffer serious disease, injury, or illness, I desire that those who love and care for me touch me and tell me so, demonstrating that I am precious to them.

And then I burst into tears at the delicate intimacy of the wording, even though it’s probably boilerplate text these days.

touch me and
tell me that
you love and
care for me,
that I am
precious to you

I was vulnerable. On Friday, for the 50th anniversary celebration of the Stanford Linguistics Department, it look the complex labors of four graduate students — Melissa Cronin, Tony Velasquez, Büşra Marşan, and Jonathan WuWong, cheers for you guys! — to get me there by 4 and back to my house later. And there were far too many people there for me to greet more than a few, but that was sweet, and then I realized that I would almost surely never see the out-of-town visitors again in my life, and probably few of the Stanford people, and that was sorrowful.

Then Sally Thomason just reported:

Steve (Stephen R.) Anderson [of Yale University] died last night, October 13, after a diagnosis last month of aggressive stage 4 esophageal cancer

Damn! And I owed him e-mail.  An old friend from the 1960s (he was just 3 years younger than me), a true scholar, an extraordinary general linguist, a good guy, and a sturdy friend (he sent me remarkable cheeses from Switzerland when I was sick and downcast!). As someone who isn’t easily accepted by straight guys, I treasure same-sex friendships; linguistics has been good to me in that regard, and Steve was just unhesitatingly a sturdy friend (so, characteristically, when I thanked him for that, he was baffled).

This entry was posted on October 14, 2025 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Death notices, Events and occasions, Friendship, Language and the law, My life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.