A Good Man Gone

Today during 7th period, I got a message from my mother that one of my former teachers had passed away. Since my mother was a teacher, too, I grew up in the halls of a high school. Her colleagues were a part of my childhood memories and the halls of that school were my playground. I remember this man not just as a teacher but also as a part of that childhood, always present in his room across the building from my mother's. Even once I had graduated, whenever I would go back to visit or to see Mom on my way home from college, he was always one of the people I'd go by and visit with.

I just sat at my desk and cried. It's hard for me to believe he's gone. It seems like I just saw him yesterday, like I just talked with him in the halls of that other school a moment ago, and today I was told that he's gone for good. He was about Mom's age; they started teaching at about the same time and taught for about the same length of time, so he wasn't an elderly man, but cancer is no respecter of age, as we all know.

He had retired from the school where I had known him for so long, but he had gone back to work again, as it seems so many retired teachers do, and the last I'd heard of him, he was happy with it. He was one of those life-long teachers who I think of as being "called" to the field because of his great passion for sharing the knowledge that he loved with his students. Today the world is just that much darker for that much passion and concern being gone from it. He will be missed by those who know what it is to have been his students. He was a good teacher and a good man.