~and I will~

I always knew that some day I would have to write this blogpost.  I just didn't figure it would happen today.  One of the things that I have found to be true about writing is that the process of pouring out your heart is very therapeutic and healing.  My heart hurts today and maybe, just maybe, the words I write will make the difference.

Who knows?
It's worth a try.

My sister Sherry passed away late last evening.  I saw her yesterday afternoon and realized that the time was coming quickly.  It was too quickly for my liking but realistically I knew that it was for the best.  The pain and suffering of living with end stage COPD is a tough and bitter pill to swallow.  Her health of the last month or so was steadily going downhill.  Sherry's journey down that "slippery slope" was at the critical mass stage.  Looking back now, perhaps there was only one way to describe it all.

Inevitable.

I sit here today at the kitchen table typing out these words to try and tell you how I feel.  But it's not easy, at least not like I thought it would be.  I've lost plenty of friends and family members before in my life.  Shoot, I lost my mother and my brother only 6 weeks apart back in 2007 and even though it hurt, it still doesn't feel like this.  Perhaps it is because it seems like a part of me inside has gone with her and there's a gap that I'm going to have to fill and that will happen I am sure.  

It will take some time.

I have often said that I learned everything I needed to know about how to be an exemplary teacher simply by watching Sherry all these years.  I will forever stand by those words.  She was my mentor, the one person I could go to when I was challenged with something within my own classroom and I'd ask her what she thought I could try to do.  She always had a good answer, generally speaking one of just simple common sense.  Even after she retired back in 2010, Sherry remained always a teacher and she enjoyed so much hearing about what was going on in my own classroom.  Over the past few years she helped me out with school supplies, snacks for the kids,  books and materials of her own, and a listening ear at the end of a long day of school.  

You know what?  I will miss that.

Even though I knew what kind of a teacher she was, it has been so heartwarming in the past few days to see firsthand the "fruits of her labor" with the visit of a former fourth grade student of hers. That young man drove all the way from Tulsa to the southwestern corner of the state of Oklahoma to say his thanks and good-bye to Sherry.  I have never witnessed in my life so tender a moment such as it was. When he arrived, they didn't even have to say a word.  Their actions said it all.  Bittersweet tears streaked both of their faces.  Each of them held the other's hand and their eyes never left one another.  Their hearts did all the talking and it was a memory that forever I will keep in my own heart.  He wrote a letter to her that I will share at her funeral services next week, a reminder to me of just how powerful and mighty the influence of a good teacher can have upon a student.  

Her being gone is going to take a while to get used to.  More than likely it will be a long while. In one of her last afternoons of being able to visit with me, I told her one simple thing. My words were short and sweet, bringing a smile to her face.

"Sherry, for whatever days are left for me in the classroom, I will teach every one of them with you in my heart."

And I will.

We were just two Kansas farm girls who grew up to be teachers and truly best friends.  

(April 2010 back home in Kansas at Avenue A Elementary School in Hutchinson.  We both retired that year.  Within a few months, we were both back in new classrooms again.)