~and if you should happen upon us~

Summer school ended today, two weeks after it began.  We were fortunate at our school to be able to offer a short, extended time for the kids to come back and work a bit more on their reading and math skills before heading home for "good" and enjoying their summer vacations.  I was so thankful that everyone in my class decided they would like to be a part of it and they came each day with positive attitudes and a right spirit about them.  It was wonderful to be able to spend some more time with them and make one last check of skills that I wanted to be sure they had a good handle on.

I have to admit that about an hour after the last little one had gone home with their mom, I felt more than a tinge of sadness about me.  It was a melancholy feeling that kind of crept up on me and took me by surprise.  I love summertime and the chance to rest and relax a little so I was ready for summer school to come to a close for myself and all the others as well.  That feeling of sadness was one that called out to me saying,

"Ok Peggy.  The kids are going home for the summer, so what are you going to do now?"

It was a sense of loss that I have felt from time to time in the course of the past 4 decades of working with children.  Ok, ok....who am I kidding here?  I don't feel it from time to time, rather I feel it pretty dang regularly.  When the kids go home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or annual spring breaks I often find myself only a couple of days into our time off wishing for the days to pass quickly so we can all be together learning once again.  Summertime vacation at year's end is the worst time, especially for the first couple of weeks as I try to transition into life at home.  I always end up doing fine and a few weeks into it I look back and think how silly it was to feel that way.  

Yet I surely do.

My sister Sherry was just like me.  I watched her and saw the connection she made between her students and herself.  After nearly 43 years in education, her heart was filled just like mine is with the memories of positive experiences as a classroom teacher.  Sherry and I retired from teaching at the same time in May of 2010.  Neither of us was ready and we had many heartfelt conversations about why on earth we made the decision to call it quits in the first place.  By the time school rolled around in the fall, both of us had returned to work in the classroom.  Sherry stayed for another 3 years and I am still at it, 8 years later.  

Neither of us looked back.

In this, the summer before my 63rd year, I know that I cannot stay forever.   My days as an educator are dwindling down to a very precious few now.  Arbitrarily I have set another 3 years as my overall goal of remaining in teaching, and I pray that the good Lord will see fit for me to have a classroom of children to care for and to call my own.  Grandfield has been so wonderful to me and my prayer is that I get to remain there until my time is through.  I've been so blessed this past year and have no desire to go anywhere else.  My swan song in education will be played out on the Oklahoma prairies of Tillman County no matter how long I should end up staying.  

I'm not sure what I will do when I retire.  Every time I get this feeling of sadness that the year is over and no longer will I be the teacher of that particular group of students, I realize just how much of my being is invested in the lives of children.  I would be the first to say that it hurts sometimes to have to accept how fast the time goes, especially as I see retirement standing on the street corner, just a block down the street away from me.  I still have much that I want to do and I worry that time will run out before I am finished, and so I do the only thing I know how to do.

I just keep trying.

A few days before Sherry died, I was sitting on her hospital bed and we were talking about what would happen when she passed on.  We made a pact together to be buried side by side back home in a little country cemetery near our hometown in Kansas.   I asked Sherry if we should share the same gravestone and she said that we should.  She passed me over a notebook that she had with her, and we began to sketch out what we wanted that marker to look like.  There were things that we wanted to be sure were on it and I listened carefully to what my big sister said before transferring her thoughts onto the paper.  Soon that stone will be placed at our spot there in Laurel Cemetery and although it kind of seems strange for me to see what it will look like today, hopefully long before I am gone, I still am thankful to know that our wishes will be carried out when we both are gone from the earth

.  

If anyone should happen upon us in the years ahead, I hope that they read the inscription at the bottom of our marker and remember us in their hearts.  It would mean the world to Sherry and you know what?

It will mean the world to me too.