I've been waiting for inspiration before I write in the new year, and I don't think that I can find a better form of it than this.
At 16 years old, I was busy thinking of myself, no care in the world, other than what was going to make me happy. Whether it be a family gathering, the person I was dating, the friends I was keeping, or the haircut I envied in a magazine, I truly had no real problems. At 16, I thought that if these areas of my life were incomplete, I would be incomplete as well.
Fourteen years later, I find myself in front of 150 versions of my former self, and as a teacher, I try my best to guide them in the right direction during the forty-five minute interval we share each day. Within those 150 students, there is one that will be in my mind forever, and this is because of the unbelievable strength and resilience that I could never have fathomed at 16, nevertheless, now, at thirty.
Knowing that someone is dying can never prepare you for the day it actually happens. When I heard of my student's death, I could barely believe the words coming from the other end of the telephone. As I tried to compose myself for first period, all I kept visualizing was his face in that last row, a voice saying "I'm not going to be in for a while," and the arm that was constantly raised for the first half of the school year.
The most amazing aspect of it all is that if I didn't hear it from his guidance counselor, I would never would have known that he was sick. He would come into school everyday, ready to work, laughing, smiling and unbelievably energetic - without a single complaint. He was very much unlike the aspiring football player in the back seat, the popular girl in the third row, or even the weary teacher sitting in the front desk, tired from lack of sleep from the night before.
As I write this, I am thinking of every excuse I've made, every insignificant argument I've had, and the times I could have done something when I did nothing. While some people are sleeping with dreams of tomorrow, this student, in his intelligence, ambition and grace, is lying in a box when he should be looking forward to his high school graduation.
They say things happen for a reason, and perhaps it's to have an ability to see beyond the insignificant ennui that is inevitable in the everyday. Maybe it's to realize what true happiness is - that being incomplete is only incomplete if you want it to be.
At the wake earlier today, my student's mother graciously thanked me for teaching her son. The fact of the matter is, he actually taught me.
