Erin and the Boys, Eleven Years Later

As many people who have followed this blog for awhile probably know, October 5th is the date my sister Erin died, eleven years ago now. Each year on this date, or at least as close to it as we can all manage, our family will get together for an evening of remembrance. We do it for ourselves, but we’re also honoring one of Erin’s wishes at the same time — her greatest fear in facing death was the idea that she might be forgotten. Of course, regardless of how much all of our lives have changed over the past eleven years, there was never really a chance of this happening. 

But this time every year my mother rounds back to this same thought, because she so desperately wants to know that her three grandsons have managed to hold onto memories of the aunt they loved so much during the time they had with her. 

As I’ve done a few other times to commemorate the date and do my part of keeping her memory alive, I went back to the memoir I wrote (and shelved) that chronicled our experiences during her illness and death and dug out a passage to share, this time as much about the boys as about Erin. Fair warning — it’s not exactly an easy read, so steer your way around it with the page breaks if you want.

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The following day would be my last at school for awhile, though I didn’t know it at the time. I warned my student teacher Stephanie it was likely the day would soon come when she’d show up and there would be a sub in my place, and there weren’t any promises I could make her about how much notice she’d have beforehand. Days later the responsibility fell to her to tell my class Erin had died. Actually, let me clarify: The responsibility did not fall to her -- this college girl took it upon herself to tell them when others were too uncomfortable or unable to do it. 

I left right after school and spent a few hours at Erin’s that evening. She was in bed the whole time, in and out of sleep. She woke briefly while we were there and saw through her glazed stare and oxygen mask that Jenny and I were with her. Ben and Matt came with their dad to visit that night as well, after leaving John with his other grandma. For John, dying was what happened to an action figure when it was stabbed by another action figure, or fell into the lava that seemed to follow his unfortunate collection of action figures everywhere they went. Dying has no permanence when you’re only three, and even though he knew Erin was dying he didn’t really get what it meant. Matt had a better idea, but it was still a bit beyond him to completely grasp. Ben, however, was all too aware of what was happening. 

Erin’s eyes opened a little when she saw the boys were there, so they were able to sit on her bed and hold her hands. Matt was a little bouncy, holding the Special Baseball she had given him while he sat beside her. He picked up on the somber mood of the room but was still his irrepressible five-year-old self, happy to see her again. When I think of what a sensitive kid he was, it’s almost a blessing he didn’t fully understand what was happening. 

Ben took it hard. He sat on the edge of the bed, holding Erin’s hand after she had fallen back to sleep, after Matt had followed everyone else back out to the living room. Jenny sat beside him. Ben had the tendency to go internal whenever something was bothering him, and was good at forcing a smile when he didn’t know how else to react. I couldn’t really fault him for not knowing what to do. I had never lost anyone as close to me as Erin was to him. 

Jenny saw through it though, and told him it was okay to cry. I was sure he would just sit there smiling unresponsively, pretending to be brave, but of course she’s his mom. As soon as she gave him permission, he broke. Still holding Erin’s hand, he slowly tipped in and buried his face in Jenny’s shoulder, and all I could hear was the too familiar sound of heaving sobs, and all I could see was the involuntary hunching of his shoulders. 

Erin woke and saw he was there so they talked a little. Jenny got up to give them some alone time, but I stayed back in one of the corner chairs to watch; being his godfather and knowing he was about to lose his godmother amplified how protective I felt toward him. They had a good conversation for awhile, but as Erin talked longer she stopped making sense; the morphine-induced dementia was taking over, and Ben started getting uncomfortable since he hadn’t encountered it before. I hurried out to tell Jenny what was happening, and she called him into the next room to give him a way out. When he said goodnight to her, I’m sure at some level he knew it was going to be for the last time. 

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I have a photo collage frame hanging in my hallway, showing each of the boys with Erin at some point in what would turn out to be her final year. I chose these pictures specifically since I feel they were so representative of who they each were at that time, and what their relationship with her was like. 

Erin and Ben, either New Year’s Eve 2003 or New Year's Day 2004. Here you see that uncertain smile he’d wear sometimes, as Erin held on to him. I’ve always had my own ideas about what she was thinking about here, but I can really only speculate.

Erin and Matt, Thanksgiving 2003. Matt’s a high school junior now. You can tell here what a nonstop kind of kid he was at this age, from his little grin and the legitimate twinkle in his eye. Erin was definitely smiling for the camera here, but she was always happy whenever he was around.

Erin and John, Summer of 2004. We were all at a cousin’s graduation open house, and when Erin arrived — a little later than the rest of us because her energy level was waning — John toddled down the driveway to meet her when he saw her coming. This is one of my favorite pictures.

Only the boys themselves could ever say how much they still know of her, whether that would be a deep library of memories, or a few highlights mixed with an emotional echo they can’t quite source, or a vague and general idea of who she was strengthened by the things the rest of us share. I know Ben and Matt have some memories. But John was only three when Erin died, which made him a little older than I had been when my grandpa Joe died. I never really remembered anything about my grandfather, but throughout my life I’ve heard the stories and I’ve seen the pictures. I’m not sure how important it is that I didn’t have memories of him that were my own, because I still know who he was and what he meant to so many people I love. That’s always been enough to make him a part of my life. So if that’s what time holds in store for any of the boys when it comes to remembering Erin, I think that’s okay. In the end, she’s still in there for them somewhere.

A Short Story About Coloring and My Childhood Smart Mouth

My job as an elementary teacher means I probably spend more time coloring than most other adults. I have to make a lot of examples of projects to model student work, I make a lot of posters to post behavioral prompts and background information, and so on. I have an entire desk drawer devoted to markers and pens and dry erase markers and pencils and coloring tools of all variety. It's really somewhat out of control.

I don't mind coloring at all. It's often very calming, and gives me a nice break from having to think about nine different life-or-death school issues at the same time like I usually do. Some projects take longer than others, and when I find myself caught up in one of the longer ones, my mind almost always wanders back to a particular memory:

My history as a rule-following school toady goes all the way back to kindergarten. I loved school, I loved my teacher, I wanted to do well and worked very hard every day I was there, which was every day except the one sick day when I had to stay home. I remember there was only one sick day because it broke my heart that I couldn't be at school and was so excited the following day when I was allowed to go back.

Two years later it wasn't the same story. School was something to survive more than anything else because I had the worst teacher of my entire life. Seriously. She was the embodiment of every bad teacher caricature that has ever been illustrated in any comic strip or middle grade graphic novel. One day we were doing a second grade project that involved drawing and coloring flags from countries all around the world -- I think it had something to do with a school wide play or festival or musical blow-out or something. I was given Switzerland. I though this was great. All I had to do was draw a big plus sign in the middle, leave it alone, and fill the rest of my paper by scribbling my red crayon into oblivion. I didn't have any real attention span to speak of as a child (which is so different now, of course), so I literally scribbled. Everywhere. In all directions. It looked less like a flag and more like a piece of paper that had recently held four pounds of spilled spaghetti.

The teacher was stalking the aisles to evaluate our works in progress with her best impersonation of the animated schoolmaster from Pink Floyd's "The Wall," and when she reached my desk she stopped, stared, clucked accusingly, and sighed angrily.

"Didn't you learn how to color in the same direction like everyone else did in kindergarten??" she barked.

I looked at my paper, which I thought looked fine, and noticed that, yes, my red streaks were all over the place. Not knowing what else to say (and, frankly, a little tired of her at that point in the school year) I looked up and innocently said:

"I guess everyone else learned how to do that on the day I was sick."

And then the look on her face. If she could have legally gotten away with smacking me upside the head....

Back to School: Building a Legacy

When the 2015-16 school year comes to an end, I will have been teaching at the same school for 24 years. For perspective, this means that out of the approximately 80 people I currently work with, only three of them have been at that school longer than I have. Additionally, this 24th year is also something of a personal landmark for me, since I’ll be turning 48 years old within weeks of the school year ending.

It doesn’t take a math teacher to see this means I’ve now been at the same school for half of my life.

So far this 24th year has started like so many of the others have. The first week back was all about scrambling to get ready, attending various meetings and staff development sessions, and reconnecting with the colleagues we haven’t seen in months while starting to get to know the new people. One of our new teachers this year is someone who had been at our school years ago and was returning for a new position. I had some time to briefly catch up with her one morning. While we were talking, she mentioned how whenever she thought of me or heard my name, she immediately thought of the bunny suit I’ve worn at Halloween for the past ten or fifteen years.

This wasn’t a big surprise, since that costume has always stirred up quite a reaction. Since I started wearing it, there have been more yearbooks with pictures of me in that bunny suit than not. But her comment got me thinking later in the day: When my time there finally ends, will that costume be how I’m remembered?

I’ve taught 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades there, and have been the cooperating teacher to at least five student teachers. I’ve been invited to see students play any number of sports, attend their dance recitals and band concerts, and see their plays, sometimes years after they were in my class. I’ve been the school patrol advisor, the broadcast team advisor, the web site manager, the technology lead, and a union representative. I’ve served on the child study team, the crisis team, the building leadership team, along with so many other committees I can’t even remember what several of them were even called anymore.

But what are the things that would really stick with the thousand-plus students I’ve worked with by now? Would I really be remembered for a Halloween costume? Or just for fun times and jokes, or the books I used for read aloud? Or the times when I lost my temper, or found some powerful and unique way to completely screw up someone's day? Sure, there are always going to be a handful of students and parents who remember some positive difference you hopefully made, but there are probably just as many who retrospectively see you in an opposite light. And of course, there’s a huge group between those extremes who would need to stop and think to even remember anything about you only ten years after you were an integral part of their daily life. 

And then there’s the staff. Teachers share great camaraderie and commonly develop close personal bonds, but there are always conflicting ideas and personalities whenever people are tossed together into any kind of environment that relies on any degree of cooperation to succeed. I’ve been there long enough to see several close friends come and go over the years, along with people I never really got to know. For my part, I feel like I’ve had good personal and working relationships with the large majority of my colleagues, both current and past. Having said that, though, I’m neither naive nor arrogant enough to think I’m one of those rare exceptional people universally loved and respected by everyone I work with.

So where does all of this leave me after half a lifetime, or any of us, regardless of where we are in our lives? Is a legacy defined by the difference we make in the world around us, both in the people we help and the ones we hurt, whether we intended to or not? Is it something so intangible as to evade even a superficial concrete definition? Is a legacy really anything more than a one-dimensional punchline of remembrance, or a way to conveniently label a collective memory?

I think everyone does have a legacy, but none of us really get to directly determine what ours will be. Perhaps instead of wondering about what legacy we might leave behind, it’s more important to live presently, and be aware of what words and actions we insert into the lives of the people around us — and, particularly for teachers, the lives of our students. 

In just a couple more days I’ll have my 24th First Day of School, and the kids will be showing up with different levels of enthusiasm and readiness to be guided through another year. In the end, what they learn and if they feel cared for will be far more important than who did the teaching. But that ‘who’ part is going to matter as well. Even if we teachers don’t always get to see it, we need to remember how far our reach extends.

Our legacy isn’t really what we leave. It’s more about what our students take with them.