Rememberances from Terry

Terry Haller Remarks

I am Terry Haller, and I am a close friend of the Babler family.  In fact, I have been like a second father to the kids.  Imagine a strange man come over to their house every day for a period of 30 years – and they never once called the police!  Indeed, their family was my family too, and Margot was the central focus of that world.

One of the greatest American playwrights was Thornton Wilder, and he was actually born in Madison in 1898.  He lived here with his family where his father was editor of the Wisconsin State Journal.  His family’s home was located on the same land where my Maple Bluff home was located, and in 1984, when I purchased that home, one of the first things Margot and I decided to do was to tear out some moldy pine paneling in the basement recreation room and discard it.  We later discovered to our horror that this paneling had been transplanted from the Wilder’s living room when the latter home was torn down in 1926.

Wilder’s greatest play, Our Town, was also Margot’s favorite.  This play is far more than a staple of high school theater departments.  Indeed few if any works of literature have better served to illustrate the relationship between everyday life and the eternal.  The play tells the story of a normal family in the simple days of early 20^th century rural America.  The first part deals with daily life, the second with love and marriage, and the final part with death and remembrance.  It is from the third part of this, Margot’s favorite play, that I read now.

Emily Webb, who has just died in childbirth, asks the God-like Stage Manager from her grave to relive her twelfth birthday.

This wish is granted, but the experience is too much for Emily.  She cannot bear to deal with the mundane details of everyday life, knowing how precious they actually are and knowing what the future holds:

MR. WEBB: Offstage
Where’s my girl?  Where’s my birthday girl?

EMILY: In a loud voice to the stage manager
I can’t.  I can’t go on.  It goes so fast.  We don’t have time to look at one another.

She breaks down sobbing

The lights dim on the left half of the stage.  Mrs. Webb disappears.

I didn’t realize.  So all that was going on and we never noticed.  Take me back – up the hill – to my grave.  But first:  Wait!  One more look.

Good-by, Good-by, world.  Goody-by, Grover’s Corners … Mama and Papa.  Good-by to clocks ticking … and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee.  And new-ironed dresses and hot baths … and sleeping and waking up.  Oh earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

She looks toward the stage manager and asks abruptly, through her tears:

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?

STAGE MANAGER:
No.

Pause

The saints and poets, maybe – they do some.

EMILY:
I’m ready to go back.

She returns to her chair besides Mrs. Gibbs.

Pause

And so, on a rainy September afternoon, Emily Webb, having died well before her time, returns to her grave and to the ages.

Farewell, Margot.