Louise Sundararajan
James R. Averill passed away in his sleep on the 19th of August 2024. See obituary by his daughters here.
Being privileged to be the last person he spoke to before he went into sleep from which he never awoke, I would like to share an account of Jim’s last day (the 18th), with the help of his daughter Laurie who gave the following details in her correspondence with me:
He spoke to his best friend of decades from UMASS, Icek Aizen, and they made plans to get together after his trip to Boston. He had a nice dinner at Rockridge and according to staff, he and a friend named Hank (I believe that’s his name) had a spirited discussion in the dining room about the upcoming election. He went for a short walk after dinner with another friend, observing birds in the yard. Afterwards, they played a game of cribbage. I called my dad that evening shortly before 10 pm and we talked for about 30 minutes. He was in a good mood and we had a good discussion about the upcoming election and other topics. Then you talked with him later that evening. He was a night owl, and it appears he didn’t go to bed until around 4 am. I suspect his kitty, Murphy, was curled up against him as he slept, as he often did.
I spoke with Jim on the phone at 11:00 pm. He told me about a NY Times article he just read (by Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald Reagan), and how he was concerned about the epidemic of loneliness and drug addiction so vividly depicted by the author. As a counter-measure, Jim suggested that we co-author a book for the general public on relationship, creativity, and spirituality. Forty-five minutes into our discussion, his phone died. He left a message around 12:30 am to say that his phone was up and running again, and that he would call the next day to continue the conversation.
It strikes me that this is not the usual death-bed scenario. There were no signs of sagging intellectual energy, for one thing. In sharp contrast to the Asian ideal of detachment and renunciation as hallmarks of a good death (Permanadeli & Sundararajan, 2020), Averill was engaged with the world throughout and always eager and ready to make a contribution intellectually to improve the human condition. I believe that what I have witnessed is an art of dying which approximates to the Western ideal of a life that drinks from its overflowing goblet with passion to the last drop. For an analysis of the differences between the Western notion of passion and its Chinese counterpart qing, see Averill and Sundararajan (2006).
Jim did not call the next day, but the conversation he initiated is likely to be continued by anyone, myself included, who has been inspired by his trail-blazing work on emotion, creativity, and spirituality, and especially by his insight into how all three can roll up into one.
References
. Averill, J. R., & Sundararajan, L. (2006). Passion and Qing: Intellectual histories of emotion, West and East. In K. Pawlik & G. d’Ydewalle (Eds.), Psychological concepts: An international historical perspective (pp. 101-139). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
. Permanadeli, R. & Sundararajan, L. (2020). Savoring in Bereavement: The Javanese Journey through Death. In A. Dueck (Ed.), Indigenous Psychology of Spirituality: In my beginning is my end (pp. 253-270). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
