I suppose teaching is in the forefront of my mind due to the fact that all my colleagues are headed back to their classrooms this week–suckers! I kid. I kid. It’s probably normal to be waxing nostalgic about the high points of my career, and I hope that given some distance, the good times might be all I remember, ’cause it’s hard work, y’all. For reals.

Corresponding with back-to-school season is the upcoming celebration of my baby ladies’ birth–they’re turning one next week! This fact is narrowly comprehensible to me. But then I look at  photographs, at the proof, and I can remember where I was just a year ago. 

At the end of my high-risk pregnancy with multiples, I missed out on a tragic event. How can you “miss out” on something tragic, you ask? Well, I guess I believe there’s a time and season for everything. Some events  seem untimely, unseasonal. While I was ecstatic over the arrival of O and Ro, a family I was acquainted with through teaching was coming to grips with the departure of their son. While I certainly don’t regret being in the hospital with our newborn babes, I do wish I could’ve been there to mourn with a community I’ve grown to love.

Every year, my students at some point beg me to say they’re my favorite class–that I liked all the others, but come on, just admit they’re the class I’ll miss the most. I’ve told them I’ve loved and appreciated aspects of each class, that it’s impossible to compare. And while there’s truth in that, it’s not entirely true. I really did (do) have a favorite.

My “favorites” are in college now. Soon they’ll be headed back to school for their sophomore year. (Study up guys!) Perhaps part of what was so awesome about those kids is that there were so many good-humored, flat-out hilarious kids all shoved together in my classroom. It was the era of Napolean Dynamite, and I can easily envision many a portrayal of the whacky protagonist. It was never lost on me that while in the throes of their adolescence, many of my students were just the teensiest bit cooler than Naplolean himself, but only slightly. What? They all grew out of it.

We filmed a movie that year. Really, we did. Everyone was involved, and we all learned that what doesn’t kill us will, at the very least, make us remember not to do it again. Never ever. Ever again. But it wasn’t just the major productions we threw together; it was the little things like impromptu Lord of the Dance jigs in heels–and that was just the guys! It was the constant banter, watching wit develop in those once-awkward kids. They were so proud of their new comedic prowess. It was a weapon they wielded in my class, and often.

The truth is that educators make a bigger impact on some students than others. I regret that I never did get through to some of my students (of that I’m sure). It’s also fair to say there just are some kids who we remember better than others. Maybe we shared more laughs together. Maybe they got my style of teaching more than the others. Whatever it was, those students that year–my “favorites”–made an impression on me. They changed me. There were a bunch of characters in that group, and it’s just a difficult pill to swallow knowing one of them isn’t going back to college next week.

A few days after O and Ro graced us with their very existence, I was still recovering in the hospital. One night, as my sweet husband was tucking me in, he took my hand and said he had some really bad news, and did I think I could handle hearing it. He went on to tell me one of my former “favorite” students, J, was in a near-fatal car accident and was in another hospital down the street. (Some of my closest colleagues had told the hubs to keep me away from email to protect me from the news while the girls were being born.)

I assumed that while he was in rough shape, he would, of course, recover; maybe he’d be going to college a semester late. That wasn’t the case though; J had no brain activity, probably wouldn’t recover, and his parents were praying for a miraculous turn of events to prevent them from pulling the plug by Friday of that week. See responsible and thoughtful kid that J was, he had just signed on to be an organ donor when he turned 18–almost a year to the day of his accident; that limited the amount of time the doctors could artificially sustain him.

I don’t know if I can accurately describe the kid J was, but I’ll try. He was smart, funny, and very aware of how smart and funny he was. He was popular, and he had a laugh… Perhaps the best way to describe him is to say that after all these years and hundreds of students, I can still remember the sound of his voice. I still remember the way he’d enter the room and joke with his friends. I don’t remember there being a “kind of” kid he wouldn’t sit down with and have a conversation. My impressions of him aren’t just mine. J was student council president; his popularity just grew with high school. He’d come back to visit me at school like some of my other kindred spirit students have over the years. As he got older, the visits came less and less, which is to be expected.

About a year before the accident, J came to talk to me at a football game. He was a senior now and at the top of his game, so to speak. Invincible. The world was open to him, ripe with possibility for a smart kid who could charm nearly everyone he met. “Charismatic” is definitely the word that suits him best. He had plans for college and beyond–it was all planned out. Dreams never realized.

A light went out just as my girls’ cries pierced the hushed hallways of the maternity ward. Blocks away from where my husband and I cradled our babes, J’s parents were facing… Really, what words could possibly describe what they were facing?

Even now it just crushes me to think about. He was here for just 19 years. Imagine what he could have done with even twice that! Those are the thoughts that lead to questions that often have no answers. The giving of life. The taking away of life. The mysterious ebb and flow of a constant God who lets you shake a fist at Him and comforts you while you’re doing so.

I wanted so much to be at his funeral and to weep and to grieve with the community of hundreds of people who came to celebrate J’s life and his story. The amazing thing–from what I’ve been told–is that J’s life actually was celebrated. It’s still being celebrated in so many ways by his classmates, his family, his acquaintances, his teachers.  His story continues on in the lives of those with whom he shared a meal, a class, a well-devised plan or scheme, or a laugh. A laugh I can still hear, even now.