A fellow teacher died this week, ending her three-year fight with cancer. She was a coworker, not really a friend, more of an acquaintance really. She was someone who I would exchange pleasantries on a cold afternoon while on lunch duty. Someone who I would swap stories of children or compare notes about a particular student. She was just a face in the hallway that was quick to share a smile and ask about my day. With a population just over 2000 students, there are a lot of faces of teachers that I might, if hard pressed, call by name. Usually, I know them through common students. Like all people, students do like to gossip, and often the main topic is one teacher or another. Teachers all know this, so as long as it doesn’t border on slander, I usually let them gripe while I handle the more mundane tasks of the day such as attendance. From this chatter, the true measure of a teacher emerges. Forget about test scores, pass/fail rates, and all of the other tools used by state officials to judge teacher effectiveness. The truly great teachers endear the respect of their students. This respect manifests itself in how a student describes a teacher when they feel only their peers can hear. Little do they know just how far the sound of a whisper can travel across a crowded classroom. Based upon this, the most important measure of a teacher’s success, this lady was one of the best of us. Fair, challenging, compassionate, kind, prepares you for the next class, were all words or phrases used to describe her.
While I mourned the loss of a coworker, someone whose struggles I’ve followed through school emails, prayer chains, and concerns from her students, her loss was not the same as the loss of a dear friend. However, her passing had a much greater impact than I had expected. The notification of her death I received as I entered the school office felt like a kick to the gut. Tears came to my eyes; I walked to my classroom in a daze. It felt as if something had been ripped from deep inside of me.
After forty-two years of life, I have felt Death peeking from beneath his cowl. I have experienced the frantic phone calls at one in the morning, which rarely bring good tidings. I have taught to the empty chair in the back of the room, never to be graced again by a young man with a mischievous grin. I have looked up from helping students to see my mother standing upon the threshold of my classroom needing comfort from the news of the cancer diagnosis for my grandfather. I have held the lonely vigil in the ICU waiting for a father-in-law to die. I have also knelt at the bed of my three-year old child, tubes extending into her lungs, and prayed “Thy will be done” hoping that His will matched my own heartfelt desire. Thankfully it did. With the family of my fellow teacher, it did not.
I had witnessed death in the past; I should not have been effected as I was by the passing of someone who was, if the truth were told, more stranger than friend. But I was. I grieved for this person I knew mainly through others, their grief touched my soul. Students and teachers have shed tears this week, and I’m not ashamed to admit that a few of those tears have been mine.
With the news of a death, especially of one as young as my coworker, all of those memories you felt were safely locked behind impenetrable vaults in your mind rush out in a torrent. Faces, feelings, angst, despair all assault you in a moment. It is as if a dream has been stolen, taken away in reality’s cold grip. For a thirty-five year old woman to die, leaving behind a three-year old son seems wrong.
When you stand before the altar of life’s rites of passage, you envision a future teeming with possibilities. You see the joys of living your life with your soul’s mate, you imagine the feelings of love at witnessing your children complete their own life journeys, and you contemplate the restful years of retirement blissfully spoiling your grandchildren rotten. You never imagine a life cut short, a child bereft of his mother, a husband burying his heart in the cold, unforgiving ground. Death should come at the end of a long, well lived life.
All of this has served as a reminder that Death’s stare is impartial and unbiased. At any moment, anyone can feel Death’s embrace. It is a warning to enjoy life, to live it to its fullest. That has been the consistent theme concerning my coworker. She never let her cancer define who she was. She lived her life on her terms. Hers was a life well lived, yet painfully short.
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