Retired SEMO professor writes to deal with grief

Robert Hamblin of Cape Girardeau, an emeritus professor of English at Southeast Missouri State University, has a reliable outlet for his powerful feelings in the wake of the death of the love of his life, his wife Kaye, on Good Friday 2020.

He writes poetry because the venerable educator says it is his favorite form of written expression.

"People are surprised to hear I prefer the poets to (William) Faulkner," said Hamblin, the founding director of the Center for Faulkner Studies, housed since 1989 on the fourth floor of Southeast's Kent Library.

Hamblin, who said he grew up 60 miles from Faulkner's Mississippi home, will see his latest work on the modernist writer, "Faulkner: Critical Essays," published in September 2022 by the University Press of Mississippi -- the 21st book he has either written or co-edited about the Nobel Prize laureate.

A love story in verse

Hamblin has written three self-published books directly dealing with his "emotions, anxieties and conflicts" acting as husband and caregiver to Kaye, who succumbed to Alzheimer's disease.

• Hamblin's initial work, "Darkness Descending," came out in 2019 when Kaye was in the throes of the memory-robbing illness.

"Kaye was also a writer (and) it was my way of dealing with my feelings," said Hamblin, who graduated from high school and college with his wife of nearly 60 years.

They also pursued a master's degree together.

A sample of Hamblin's creative genius is taken from this first volume.

Kaye is often confused

About my name

And who I am.

"Are you the one

They call Dad?" she asks.

Or again, "Are you the one

Who wrote those books about Faulkner?"

• The second book in the series, "For Kaye: The Afterlife," was published following her death last year.

With the sadness I also feel relief

That her long battle with Alzheimer's

Is finally over, and gratitude

That my constant prayers

For the past two years have been answered:

That she would die peacefully at home

And that I would live long enough

To take care of her.

Now her suffering is over.

And mine begins.

• The final composition of Hamblin's trilogy, "Endnotes," was published earlier this year.

Kaye and I saw

One of Glen Campbell's last performances,

At the Carson Center in Paducah,

Not knowing when we bought the tickets

That he had Alzheimer's.

His daughter Ashley was with him

And had to help him at times

During the show.

The muscle memory was still there

For the guitar, but he had trouble

Remembering the words.

It was very sad.

But sadder two years later

When Kaye developed Alzheimer's

And Ashley's lyrics

Became my daily refrain.

Retired Southeast Missouri State University professor Robert Hamblin's self-published works inspired by the illness and death of his late wife, Kaye.Jeff Long

Coping with decline

Hamblin, 82, recalls with painful clarity, specific moments when he witnessed Kaye losing her fight with the most famous form of dementia, Alzheimer's.

"I saw it first in her driving. She couldn't manage all the controls anymore," said Hamblin, who was a full-time teacher at Southeast for 48 years, perhaps the longest faculty tenure in university history.

"The worst part is we were still going to church and to the (Cape) Senior Center and only in the last year of life was she truly helpless," he said, noting his beloved Kaye was "always so independent and proud."

Hamblin said the couple's plans were derailed by Alzheimer's, which he said, "came on so suddenly and quick."

A final trip

Hamblin said he and his wife took a last journey together, to Miami, Florida, in 2019, where Kaye had never before visited.

"We saw beaches, the Everglades and Key West -- in the last instance, where we saw the Hemingway house."

Hamblin provides a coda to this article, culled from his aforementioned trilogy.

"Sometimes we write to mend our broken hearts," he wrote.