GABE

It is a sad inevitability that a school teaching career will come with heartache, none greater than losing a student or former student to death through illness or accident.

The tragedy is multi-layered, a personal grief of seeing the empty chair in a classroom to the daunting task of nurturing the classmates left behind who are facing mortality for perhaps the first time in such a cruel way.

Forty-five years of this career has not jaded the heartsick feeling when receiving news, such as I did this past week. The young man, a former student who graduated two years ago, was living a vibrant life having pursued a good job and doing well.

He was, in a word, beloved.

And as we do during these inexplicable moments, we naturally search for the joyful memories.

Coming to mind with Gabe were Monday morning discussions of Sunday’s NFL games (he loved the New England Patriots and Tom Brady) and a mutual appreciation for New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge and Gioncarlo Stanton.

As a sports fan, this sixth grader (in 2018) was also up for my endof- class William Tell tradition, in which I from time to time would place an object on the top of a willing participant. If Mrs. Mayes (my teacher name) threw the rubber ball and knocked the object off the student’s head in one of three tries, there would be no homework and bonus points would be added to the next day’s test. This quiet student with neat handwriting had the biggest grin, even when my curve ball missed his head by “that much.”

What can we feel but sadness, when young lives are no more with us? It is unfair, unjust, and beyond our ability to comprehend. We want the nightmare to go away and wake up with our young ones still here. I did not feel this when I buried my parents. I miss them, of course, but we had time. Time taken from a child,

however, is grand theft.

Children should be walking our halls, being silly, making mistakes, learning from those errors, and growing up to be the best versions of themselves. But over 15 times in this profession, those calls came. I have delivered eulogies for some.

Written about others. Cried for all.

So once again I take pause, thankful that a teacher is a part of a profession in which we touch heaven on earth every single day when looking into the faces of every child. This gratitude is sobered when their celestial home welcomes them.

To those of you, parents and grandparents especially, who have experienced this unbearable and continual ache, we do not envy you for what was thrust upon you. We will say your children’s names, though, and share the stories of their favorite things and try not to forget who or what made them laugh.

May all children in this world be protected, be encouraged, be instructed well, and be loved in whatever time they are granted.

It is our most important work.