For L…
I’m sitting here, sipping that brew that we both loved, a little later than I ought, in a party atmosphere complete with noisemakers.
It was funny. Subconciously, I was holding mine like a cigarette. I missed you, and I remembered you.
I wished for you, or your phantom, with the coffee so strong a spoon stood at attention and the smell of stale and newer cigarette smoke. Roses from your gardening efforts were always freshly clipped and in an old-fashioned vase.
Your Merits were a token of the merit you earned doing a man’s job as woman in a man’s world, a symbol of a Christian in the world but not of it.
Can you see me? Can you see me now?!?
You left before I surrendered to Him. You were right:
- I can’t go back and fix things
- I would be happier as a professional student
Every day of my life, I miss the friends from college I hurt over the man-child you labeled a “jackass,” then “yo-yo” after he provided the sperm for your great-grandbabies. I can’t change the pain I caused or the devastation, but I can try to pay it forward by not repeating the same choices.
I am a professional student, for as I learn to teach, I find that I have to study — my students, all the diagnoses they carry like camels laden with foreign treasures, the content material as knowledge explodes, the laws that affect what I can and can’t do in the classroom. Even as a sub, I am so much happier and more fulfilled than I ever was in the business world.
I just wish I had your people smarts. You really knew people. You could make the best guesses of what people would say or do, and most of the time you were right.
I wanted in your head (or maybe you to be in mine) with R. Did I miss the signs? Was he too broken? Did I stay fully involved in the moment?
What about Z? You would never cry in front of anyone, even in your own home. What must Z be facing to cry like that? Z wouldn’t leave. The class members grew more and more uncomfortable. Some looked away while others stole secret glances. Did I overshare? Did she feel that I really cared even though I was passing through? Was it right for me to connect to a more local resource? Or was I too much a coward to take a stronger stand?
That day with K, D, and M — I feel like I rode a typhoon followed by a tsunami with that one. K was like a powder keg; K’s attitude was impermeable armor; nothing melted that. M was so hurt by how K handled the project; I just hope I said the right things and K eventually could refocus, and I hope that I didn’t turn class into a performance scenario for K. D reminded me so much of my aspie when she’s in meltdown mode. D was like 15 going on 5 and huddled trying to protect something — heart, attitude, soul. I don’t know. You always knew what all of us needed. I really wish in that moment I could have channeled you.
I know. You have a new body now. You’re too perfect to respond, and you’re in a place that’s so perfect I don’t want to even think to ask you to come back even for moment.
I just wish I knew that you see and know. And maybe, finally, are proud me.
