Summer Smith Taylor passed away today. She was in palliative care, a term that is usually only circumstantially good (in that it focuses on providing comfort) after being stricken last month with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) that resulted in insurmountable and systemic complications, including extensive brain damage.
Just typing those words makes me cold.
Word only started to get out this past week about the gravity of Summer's condition, and as I scrambled to contact our friends from graduate school, overlaying grief with clinical description, my mind crowded with images of Summer from her graduate school years.
Summer darting around downtown State College--she was small but quick--running errands, taking care of stuff. Her signature thick, strawberry-blonde hair. Her combination of warmth and drive. Her phenomenal end-of-term presentation in Chris Haas's research methods seminar. Summer's work was so stellar that Chris stopped everything after her presentation to explain to the rest of us how we could do better, be more like Summer. Summer's blush. (Those last two memories came in rapid succession.) Summer running a meeting at the Leonhard Center Technical Writing Initiative, which she directed. And boy, could she run a meeting: she taught me how. She was ever organized, always brimming with ideas, and she tolerated my and Blake's joking around with a sweetness to be cherished.
Summer with her parents, again downtown. They would walk all around together, and she always looked so happy and relaxed when she was with them. Summer at graduation (above right), gown flowing, hood neatly draped over her arm.
Blake and I squealed with delight when he told me that CCCC featured a panel focused exclusively on Summer's work, her full name in the title and everything (I can't locate the title, but I think it was something like "Calling Summer Smith"), and how Summer stood up in the audience after the panel and began her question with "I'm Summer Smith." I'm sure that got good laughs. And I am equally sure she blushed when it did. And then proceeded to say something worth heeding.
Those of us who knew Summer, especially those of us from Penn State and her long-time colleagues at Clemson where she worked for 10+ years, not to mention--dear God--her husband Rob, daughter Eva, her parents and in-laws, struggle with the magnitude of this loss. Summer was a leader, a questioner, and above all a sweet and happy person.
We are all bereft.
