Nancy passed away without pain, in the loving presence of husband Bill, daughter Marian, and son in law Bob at 1:05 a.m. on January 24, 2009, in her bed in the family home of 38 years at 3239 9th St. in Boulder, Colorado. This date is 5 months to the day shy of her and Bill's 50th anniversary.
True to form, my mother worked on projects up until she fell asleep, then slept a few hours, then died. The final project she was working on was the ancestors chapter of her ever-expanding LifeBook project. Lying in bed with a clipboard and photocopied versions of dozens of photos of her ancestors, she worked at captions and descriptions up until 10 p.m. Marian and Bob continued working past midnight on the tasks my mother had delegated to them. The night before she had been up at 3 a.m. pushing hard to make more progress on the same project. At the hospice meeting on Thursday January 22nd she was lying on the couch to be part of the meeting but also sewing miniature blankets for miniature horses for the stable she is passing on to her descendants. Now she joins the ancestors chapter.
The obituary she worked on follows. She departed giving love, receiving love, and doing what she loved. "Once I get an idea, I won't rest until it's done." My mother said this to me the night she died. Now she is on to her final project, of being at peace.
Anyone wishing to offer meals support can coordinate with my wife Catherine Childs at 303-415-9396.
Remembrances, thoughts, stories, tributes -- anything written, or audio or visual, can be sent to my email directly, and please cc Marian at mdoub@mindspring.com. (If the the files are over 5 MB, please use www.SendUit.com.)
Nancy's LifeBook will include a CD with audio recordings and images. And the special wood box Catherine gave Nancy is where we are keeping printouts of all email, blog, and US mail contributions, and a flash drive of audio and visual files.
Please indicate if what you send is OK to share with the community. If so, I will post what you send to this blog. (This is a way to not have to hassle with the blog comment procedure, a headache none of us needs!)
Nancy Carlson Doub
Nancy Platt Carlson Doub died at home at the age of 71 of uterine sarcoma on January 24, 2009. She was born in Jamaica, New York, on November 23, 1937, the third daughter of Elizabeth Josephine Platt Carlson and Rolland Douglas Carlson, both of Minnesota and now deceased. After attending P.S. 35 and Jamaica High School she left her home in Hollis, Long Island, to attend Pomona College in Claremont, California, graduating in 1959 with a major in English literature and minor in art.
A resident of Boulder since 1970 except for a year in Kyoto and the last ten years living half of each year near Grass Valley, California, Nancy felt that following her bliss led her to some amazing places, both geographically and figuratively. The journey began with her marrying William Coligny Doub (Bill) in Germany the summer of 1959 and from there with him to Palo Alto, Taipai, Seattle, Kyoto, and Williamsburg before settling in Boulder.
Nancy and Bill have been blessed with two caring and enterprising children, Marian Doub, now of San Francisco, and Eric Lin Doub of Boulder, their spouses Robert Thawley and Catherine Childs, and grandchildren Aidan Thawley and Ariel and Brian Doub. The family has remained close and united in working for social justice and environmental causes, and Nancy was proud to have risked jail by standing up to be counted in opposition to the Vietnam and Iraq wars and the production and use of nuclear weapons. In Japan the family was briefly part of the Beiheiren (League of Peace for Vietnam) underground railroad helping G.I. deserters escape through Japan to Sweden. In Boulder she was active with the Rocky Flats Truth Force while opposing the nuclear weapons plant at Rocky Flats. Mostly, however, Nancy was not particularly active politically, except for the twelve years Bill and she edited and published the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, an international radical scholarly journal that enabled them and others, they felt, to speak truth to power about issues often ignored or misrepresented in the mainstream media.
Even though until he retired Bill’s career determined where they lived, Nancy generally managed to pursue her own priorities wherever they were. Throughout she took particular pleasure in working with children, being outdoors and part of nature, and creating things. Nancy thrived on “creating castles in the air and then putting the foundation under them”—in short, thinking of things to create and then feeling compelled to bring them into being for the benefit of her family and community. This involved projects such as play equipment (at a cooperative preschool in Seattle, with a Foothill Elementary P.T.S.A. team building a now defunct tunnel hill in Boulder, a tree house and pirate ship bunk bed for her grandson in San Francisco, and play area with a zip line at her home in California), a Japanese-style bathroom, and a waterfall and pond in Boulder.
At other times Nancy tended to follow her interests serially with great absorption and passion and then move on. In Japan it was flower arranging, Japanese gardens, and the traditional Japanese aesthetic, while in Boulder it was a revival of childhood enthusiasms for tennis and riding horses, even earning local and regional rankings in both tennis and showing hunter-jumpers. While doing this she was a member of the Boulder Tennis Association (B.T.A.), Boulder Valley Racquet Club, and the Harvest House Sporting Association for the tennis, and the Boulder and Colorado Hunter-Jumper clubs for the riding. During the most recent ten years Bill and Nancy dedicated themselves to stewardship of the earth at their “off the grid” second home surrounded by more than thirty-five acres of forest in California by growing their own vegetables and fruit and thinning the forest to make it healthier and less vulnerable to fire.
Overall Nancy felt she had a rich and fulfilling life, and she was happy following where her bliss led her. Nancy’s only regret was that with her many interests and intense way of doing things she never felt able to be the elementary school teacher she had planned to be. However, she did earn her teaching credential from the University of Colorado in 1975 and worked with children in various capacities for many, many years—among them as an English conversation teacher at Doshisha High School in Japan, child care worker at Wallace Village in Broomfield, Tennis Tots teacher at the Boulder Valley Racquet Club and satellite programs, a volunteer tutor with the Learning Abilities Program and Girl Scout leader at Foothill School in Boulder, and teaching assistant at Halcyon School and Uni Hill Elementary School in Boulder.
Nancy is survived by her sisters Ruth Mullaney of Williamsburg, Virginia, and Joyce Carlson-Leavitt of Albuquerque, New Mexico, husband, children, their spouses and children, as well as nine nieces and nephews and many less-known relatives.
A celebration of Nancy’s life will be held on February 16th, 2009 at 1 pm at the Chautauqua Community House, and all are welcome. Many, many thanks to the incredible number of friends as well as family who supported her during her relatively brief illness. Certainly no more need be done, but if someone wants to make a donation in Nancy's name in lieu of flowers it can be made to the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, P.O. Box 1156 Boulder, CO 80306, www.rmpjc.org 303-444-6981. Later in the spring friends and family will celebrate her life and scatter her ashes at Nancy and Bill’s home in Camptonville, California.
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[I hope Ariel doesn't mind me posting what she wrote to Catherine's parents today... At 11, she captured much of what I am feeling too. Unedited text appears below.]
12:22 PM (11 hours ago)
Hello Grandma and Grandpa
Today has been a very sad and hard day because last night; at 1:05am Magoosh took her last breath after finishing her last project of her life. Her body was donated to science. When the scientists are done with the body; they will give it back in ashes. Everyone is deeply saddened but we will always remember her as a person who traveled the world; taught many important lessons to the ones that she loved; and always loved her family and friends. Most importantly; she is always with us and always will be. I loved her and still do. Even though she is gone; she is still here right beside us; always. I love you both so much and I know you are always there for me.
Lots and lots of love forever more,
Ariel
I am so said to hear that Nancy has passed. Nancy was always an inspiration in her dogged pursuit of what was right--whether as trivial as an edit in the pages of the BCAS or as important as civil disobedience at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. I am tempted to say that the world is a poorer place for her passing, but in fact her real legacy is that the world is such a richer place for her having been with us.
All my condolences and best wishes to Bill, Eric, Marian and the rest of the Doub family and friends,
Tim Rohrer
Marian, Bob, Eric, and Bill,
I am so sorry to hear of Nancy's passing. I can't think of a single thing to say, other than to quote Robert Haas: "All the new thinking is about loss. In this, it resembles all the old thinking."
And this, a poem from the Tao te Ching as translated by Ursula LeGuin. I read it at my father's funeral last summer, and it seems an appropriate eulogy for Nancy as well:
Knowing other people is intelligence,
knowing yourself is wisdom.
Overcoming others takes strength,
overcoming yourself takes greatness.
Contentment is wealth.
Boldly pushing forward takes resolution.
Staying put keeps you in position.
To live till you die
is to live long enough.
My love to you all,
Anne
a lovely and wide-eyed, wide-awake poem of mourning and the spirit of memory and love of the earth ...
(by a favorite poeta, of Chicana/Chumash descent, with roots in the SF Mission district and occasionally teaching @ CU)
all appropriate for Nancy:
Nothing Lasts
Only the land lasts, not you.
Only your steps upon it, the cut
glass of memory and your smile within
it survives. Only the land lasts; simple rock
and the dumb scape of lusting lack,
the rack and pinion of flight and fall.
Autumn doesn't last. Not spring
with all its fine tithings. Not the shine
of those young girls' hair, not the waists
of women, not the fading fire. Not you
and the way we were. Only the land
lasts, and the ridges of waiting wearing
out the pursed lips of furrowed ranges,
and not the cold within their lair. Only
the stunned shale, the red-faced cliffs,
the heights where someone sometime ascended
and stood, and loved, the land layering there
laid out out in its full affair, the glinting
mica and the dream of hard brooding diamonds,
all the hidden glory, the unseen flake
of gold and petrified burl. Not this
hand stroking life into an empty palm,
the smooth skin of summer, the sudden
skim of a wayward glance. Nothing of you
or the lonelier retreat of other
killer mammals and their heat.
Nothing lasts but the land, not the water
or the tearing, not the creeks and the clearings,
not the withered heart nor the soiled clothing
of social graces, nor the mouthy flaring
of wondered disgrace. Nothing lasts of this house,
not the boards nor the worms nor the birds. Not
the words I use to slow it down and make it stick.
Nothing lasts like the red clouds on the day
of your passing, the wicked gassing
or the olvido. Nothing lasts but this sand
drained of your sea; this chiseled frown
in the chipped flint, this skirting of canyon,
this flaw and filing, this grinding down
but lasting, the silk touch in a handhold,
in the holding out for the summit. Nothing
but the wounding in the craters, the uplift
and the gurgling lava; all the ways we read
a stone's hieroglyphics, the ore's heavy lead.
Were we to discover, we would uncover a myth,
the stories we tell to renew the pact
with this earth. This, love. Nothing lasts
but the land and our love
of it.
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Marian, Eric, Bill, Bob, and the g'kids,
My heart is with you all. No poems from me, just those nearly visible threads of connection reaching from my being to each of you, and to Nancy's spirit.
Love you all.
Karen
Marian, Eric, Bill, Bob and g'kids,
My heart goes out to you all. No poems from me, just those nearly visible threads of connection always stretching from my being to you all, and to Nancy's spirit.
Love you all,
Karen
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