In a stack of mail on his dining room table, Jason Snape spotted a postcard from his former college professor.
In clean, Helvetica type, it read: “If you’re reading this I’m dead, and I really liked you.”
Next to the message was a selfie of Don Glickman wearing a serious expression, a hoodie and yellow aviator sunglasses. There’s a hand-sketched portrait of him in the corner.
“It was the last thing I expected,” said Snape, 56.
After Snape got over the shock, he cracked up.
“It made me laugh really hard because it was just so him,” Snape said. “It went through the mail, so everyone along the way saw a postcard that said, ‘I’m dead and I really liked you.”
It turns out, this was one of more than 100 postcards that Glickman told his daughter to send to his favorite students and friends upon his death.
“It’s unusual, it’s sweet, it’s straightforward,” Snape said, just like Glickman was.
Glickman, who died in November, was 94.
Snape met Glickman in the late 80s at the University at Buffalo, where Glickman was his design professor. From Glickman, Snape learned to value substance over style and to see beauty in simplicity.
“I trusted him as I navigated my way through finding an answer to a problem,” Snape said. “We’re all products of our professors in one way or another.”
Snape became a design professor for 10 years, and now works at a remodeling firm in Atlanta. He said he was inspired, in large part, by Glickman — and turned to him for guidance when he started teaching.
The idea for the posthumous postcard originated last summer during a conversation between Glickman and his only child, Leah Glickman, at his home in Anacortes, Washington. He was 93 and in home hospice.
“By that point, he was in the dying process,” said Leah Glickman, explaining that her father remained sharp until the end, but his body was failing him.
Don Glickman, who had congestive heart failure, knew what he wanted at the end of his life: “His wish was to die at home with the view that he loved,” his daughter said.
In their family, Leah Glickman said, death was faced head on.
“We never used words in our house like, ‘he passed,’” she said. “We said ‘he died.’ No one gets out of here alive. We all go to the bathroom, and we all die.”
With that in mind, she asked her father how he wanted to be memorialized. He declared he did not want a funeral of any kind.
Leah Glickman threw out a few ideas, including an ice cream party. (Her father loved butter pecan.) Then, mostly in jest, she said: “You could send out a postcard.”
Her father’s eyes widened. It was decided.
“If you’re reading this, I’m dead and I really liked you,” Don Glickman said aloud. They both burst out laughing.
“It is thoroughly Don Glickman,” Leah Glickman said.
As Don Glickman’s health declined, she began collecting addresses of his favorite people.
“You knew if he liked you,” Leah Glickman said of her father.
She described her dad as having a specific sense of humor that not everyone got. He was also full of wonder.
“If I had to use one word to describe him, it would be ‘curious,’” Leah Glickman said.
At the beginning of his career, Don Glickman worked with famed architect R. Buckminster Fullerbefore teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University at Buffalo.
“Design was my dad,” said Leah Glickman, who is a production designer. “It wasn’t just architecture; it was buildings and the shoe you put your foot in and the couch you sit on and how you arrange your desk.”
Teaching was his calling.
“He was an incredibly talented designer, but teaching is what made him feel loved,” she said. “He would be so very proud to be remembered as a teacher.”
Don Glickman retired in the late 90s. He and Snape stayed in touch, and he sent his former student annual birthday emails.
“He taught for so long and the fact that he remembered me and things about me after decades, that boggles my mind,” Snape said.
Every so often, Snape would send his former professor his sketches, cartoons and projects he was working on.
“Just the stuff that amuses me, and I knew would amuse him,” Snape said.
Last fall, Don Glickman sent Snape a note saying he was in hospice. Snape sent him a package with some of his work in the hope it would raise his spirits.
Don Glickman died on Nov. 11. Leah Glickman worked with a graphic designer friend to produce the postcards, featuring a small sketch of her father made years ago by his best friend — which she described as his longtime “sign off” and signature on every email and note. She wrote her own message on the back.
“After 94 years on this planet, my dad has departed,” she wrote. “His last days were filled with butter pecan ice cream, flamenco music, a view he adored and the love he finally accepted.”
“In a last act of design and Glickman ethos, he asked that this postcard be created, photo and text chosen by him,” the note continued. “He was who he was ‘til the very end.”
Leah Glickman had already sent out the first batch of postcards — to family, friends, former students, doctors — around Christmastime, when she was cleaning out her father’s apartment, and found correspondence with Snape from over the years.
So far, Leah Glickman has sent out about 110 postcards, and she plans to send more as people come to mind.
Snape said he was honored to make the cut. He shared a photo of the postcard, resting over his sketchbook, on Instagram.
“I hope you all had a teacher like him,” he wrote in the post. “They set us on our way, a way we didn’t even know existed.”
From there, a friend of a friend shared it on X, where it quickly went viral with more than 1.5 million views.
Leah Glickman said she is stunned by the response. When people started receiving the postcards, messages poured in: “I’m saving this forever; I’m framing this; I’m saving this in a file marked ‘this is what I want when I die.’”
“I think despite his not wanting attention ever, he would love this,” Leah Glickman said.
Leah Glickman hopes her father’s final gesture encourages people to think differently about death.
“It doesn’t have to be so scary,” she said. “If you’re lucky enough to be able to make these decisions at the end of your life, you should feel free to make them.”
The post A postcard arrived: ‘If you’re reading this I’m dead, and I really liked you’ appeared first on Washington Post.
