Skip to main content

Dust to Dust

I spent the entire drive to work yesterday morning complaining about the group of students that has frustrated me so much. My friend commiserated with me because he knows them well and had a similar experience with them. It's a lovely little metaphor about repeating the same mistakes because you don't learn from the lessons that bash you in the head.

When I arrived at work, all faculty members were called into a meeting. In a school, this is never a good sign. This means that something bad happened during night...something bad enough that the administration is willing to leave every student in the school completely unsupervised. It means someone died.

Sure enough, four of our students were in an accident the night before. Three died instantly; one crawled out and was in intensive care. The surviving student sits in one of my classes. One of dead was in my class last year. I knew the other two. I've been through far too many students deaths, but this was the first that personally affected me. It sucked.

The school cancelled the performances because the junior and senior classes were completely shell-shocked. On top of that, the junior theme was zombies, and it just didn't seem appropriate to talk about the living dead in the wake of the experience.

So, I spent the day with classes of students who just stared at their desks in complete silence. Each of the students from last year's 7th period stopped by to see me. Each student who talked to me grabbed me and sobbed into my shoulder. I cried with each one. By the end of the day, I was completely drained. It took every ounce of my energy to drive home and climb on the sofa.

And I slept.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Trying to Keep It All Together

The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer. Just this morning I said, "I'm having a hard time getting it together right now." I'm in one of those periods when showing up is the best I can offer, and I can't even guarantee that. That said, I just popped on here to share that I'm struggling. I'm dealing with a lot of loss right now. Some of it is easy to spot. Some of it I've tucked away because it's either terribly painful or terribly embarrassing--at least to me. Some of it was inevitable. Some of it was a surprise. All of it rises up into the center of my chest and begs me to stop for a moment to acknowledge it. It's doing that right now even as I type this. I'm having a hard time getting it together right now.

Welcome 2010

This has been an interesting beginning to the new year. The evening began with a beer and air hockey challenge, which I handily lost. This was followed with some extreme go cart racing and more beer, a dinner that consisted of leftovers from one of my favorite South Carolina restaurants and homemade fried zucchini. And more beer. I saw "The Hangover" for the fourth time and laughed like an idiot. After the ball dropped in Times Square, I saw pieces of "Public Enemy" and finally crawled into bed around 2:00 a.m. and stayed there until 11:00 this morning. I spent today playing with a dog, watching college football, and hanging out with one of my current favorite people. I don't do the whole new year resolution thing. However, I do believe in taking a look at the lessons I've learned and the experiences that have unfolded for me in the previous year. Anyone who reads this blog can already figure out that my divorce, running, and dating again have greatly influe...

Pardon the Interruption

It's 10:00. My race clothes are laying across the top of the dog crate. I've already consumed my all-natural sleep aid. The alarm is set for 4:45 in the morning. I should be sleeping, but my mind is spinning at an unnatural rate. Remember this poem ? The subject of that poem married just a few weeks ago, and I just finished looking through his wedding photos. It's a strange feeling. Not one of loss. Or Regret. Or even wistfulness. I'm thoroughly happy for both of them in a way that will seriously not make sense to most of the people I know. I suppose there will always be an odd sense of knowing in a situation like this. I know the feel of those lips. I've seen that look in his eyes. What I felt for him was real and pure and drives the feeling of satisfaction that is currently overwhelming me. I love knowing that he's in love--even if it's not with me. I even saved my favorite photo to my computer because the image stirred something in me that needs to be sti...