A Call for Healing

Benita Odogwu-Atkinson. A Reflection on Professor Jason Arday.

Something has become deeply poignant for me: his name. Jason comes from the ancient Greek name Ἰάσων (Iásōn), Iason, associated with the idea of healing. It can be understood as “healer.”

I cannot hear that meaning now without thinking differently about his life and his death. There is a painful irony in the name. A man whose name carried the meaning of healing spent so much of his life challenging the limits that others had placed around him. Through education, scholarship and his public presence, he opened possibilities for others. His story offered hope to people who had been told, directly or indirectly, that certain rooms were not built for them.

A man whose name carried the meaning of healing spent so much of his life challenging the limits that others had placed around him.

Perhaps that, too, was a form of healing. Yet towards the end of his life, I find myself asking who was healing Jason? Who was looking after the person behind the professor? Who was holding him when the language became cruel, when criticism became relentless, and when one human being was made to carry the weight of arguments far larger than himself?

The healer also needed healing.

That is what makes the meaning of his name so poignant to me. The healer also needed healing. And perhaps there is a lesson in that for all of us. We cannot celebrate people for what they give to institutions, communities and public life while forgetting to care for the person who is doing the giving. We cannot wait until somebody is gone before speaking about their humanity.

Jason, the healer, reminds me that healing has to be something we offer one another while we are still here.’