The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times(45)
“Do you remember how he used that gift when he surveyed the devastated landscape after the Dark Lord was finally defeated? He started sprinkling little pinches of the earth all around the country—and everywhere nature sprang back to life. Well, that earth represents all the projects people are doing to restore habitats on planet Earth.”
I found Jane’s metaphor both soothing and inspiring as I let myself imagine all the small and often humble ways people everywhere were doing their part to repair the harm we’ve caused. The fire had burned low, but the room and Jane’s face were still illuminated by the now setting sun. It seemed a fitting image to close our conversation on—at least for this visit.
We still had one last conversation about hope I wanted to explore with Jane—one that had long interested me. I wanted to know about Jane’s journey to becoming a global icon. How did she transform into a global messenger of hope?
But this last conversation about Jane’s personal journey would have to wait until our next visit. We made a plan to meet again in a few months’ time when I could talk with Jane in her childhood home in Bournemouth—which seemed ideal since I wanted to learn about her early formative years. When we hugged goodbye and I left the cabin at sundown, it was December of 2019. Little did we know when we parted ways in the Netherlands how interrupted our conversation about hope would become. And how even more urgently a conversation about hope would be needed.
People have always commented on my eyes, and said I looked as though I had ancient wisdom; an “old soul” was how one woman put it. (JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE/COURTESY OF MY UNCLE, ERIC JOSEPH)
III
Becoming a Messenger of Hope
A LIFELONG JOURNEY
Like so many other meetings, celebrations, and reunions around the globe, our plan for me to visit Jane in her childhood home in Bournemouth had to be canceled because of the pandemic. It wasn’t until the fall of 2020 when Jane and I were able to resume our conversation. We spoke on Zoom—Jane was indeed in Bournemouth, but I was sitting on the other side of the world in my home in California.
By now the virus had caused an enormous amount of economic and emotional hardship and left death and devastation in its wake. Just days earlier, I’d attended the funeral of my college roommate. At the beginning of the pandemic he’d lost his job and become depressed. Another college friend and I were trying to support him through his disorientation and loss, when we finally discovered how despondent he’d become. He’d seemed to be doing better and told us he didn’t need us to come to him or send him help. But two days after our last conversation, he shot himself.
My grief for my dear friend was part of a rising global trend, deaths of despair escalating in terrifying ways as people struggled with the dislocation and isolation that the pandemic had caused. Within months, another person close to me, a young family friend, would die of a drug overdose. A mental health pandemic was spreading as rapidly as the virus. So many people felt like they were being buffeted daily by a new crisis and waves of heartbreak and grief.
Seeing Jane’s face, albeit on a screen, was a warm ray of hope in the midst of my grief. Her gray hair was pulled back into her typical ponytail, and she was dressed in the same green safari shirt that she had worn in Tanzania. She looked like a wilderness guide; and, indeed, during our work on the book, she had taken me to many of the most beautiful aspirations and darkest fears of our world and of our own human nature, as we were tracking hope and confronting despair.
“It’s so wonderful to see your face after attending this brutal funeral,” was the first thing I said when we reconnected.
“I’m so sorry, Doug. Losing someone we love is always hard. But suicide is an especially painful loss.”
Jane was seated at a makeshift “desk”—a small box on a slightly bigger box on a tiny table. The shelves behind her were a collage of family photographs, mementos from her travels, and many of the books she’d read as a child, including the Doctor Dolittle and Tarzan stories, The Jungle Book about Mowgli being raised by the wild animals of India. And her collection of philosophers and poets, reminders of her adolescent curiosity.
“And I’m sorry you couldn’t visit,” Jane said, “but let me show you round my little hideaway up in the attic.”
She walked the laptop around the room to introduce me to some of the people and keepsakes that mattered most to her.
“This is Mum,” Jane said, as she picked up a framed photo of her mother with dark hair, wearing a brown shirt. “And this one is Grub,” she said, pointing out a photo of her son, “he’s about eighteen years old here.” Grub’s hair was short, and he seemed to look forward through rimless glasses into his future.
Mum (MICHAEL NEUGEBAUER/WWW.MINEPHOTO.COM)
“And here is Uncle Eric.” He had dark hair and a serious, penetrating gaze. I was now seeing the likenesses of all the relatives I had met already during our conversations. “This is my grandmother Danny,” she said, pointing out a large black-and-white photo of an elderly woman with a gentle face that was both determined and wise. And there was another of Danny with Grub when he was a three-year-old child. Next there was her aunt, known to everyone as Olly, a shortening of her Welsh name, Olwen. And a framed portrait of the grandfather Jane had never known, who had died before she was born, a serious yet warm face rising from his clerical dog collar. Finally, there were photos of both her husbands, Hugo and Derek, and a large framed one of Louis Leakey.