what a way to end the month...

i heard that one of my favorite teachers growing up recently passed away. of course, being 6000 miles away, i heard about it well after the fact. Mrs. Freeburg was an incredible woman, one of the most influential people in my life. she taught me 8th grade. i remember being absolutely intimidated by her before i was her student, and then not remembering why i used to be so intimidated once i knew her. she was my first taste of grasping a big picture of what was going on in the world, in life. in seeing patterns of social and individual behavior. in the ability to work within a system because you believe in what it can become, not because you share in all the existing components. and in the ability of a person to adapt and overcome. you see, Mrs. Freeburg had muscular dystrophy. i don’t know what it was like for her when she first found out… i don’t know how well she adjusted, how hard it was for her. i know that when i knew her, i saw an incredibly intelligent, strong, gifted woman… who came to work every day and climbed 3 flights of stairs with the cane in her hand, who was loved and respected by her students. i got to visit once with her after she had retired… during my college years. i don’t remember what was said… but i remember leaving with the feeling that i hadn’t said everything i wanted to. funny how you can have the exact same feeling again years later… i don’t even know what i would want to tell her… would i thank her? would i tell her what i truly thought of her? would i find out how she was doing? would i want to tell her that i turned out ok? what i'm doing now? …i dunno… just one of those things that you feel something is missing…which makes me wonder if she would even remember me. with that many students over that many years… I’m sure most every student remembers the teacher, maybe even fondly. I’m sure teachers don’t remember every student. was I memorable in 8th grade? would I *want* to be considered memorable at that age? …buddhist philosophy focuses on the view of no birth, no death. that every sentient being is tied to another… that death is not an end. that parts of ourselves are manifested in other people, because of how and what we share with others, to go on through them. i believe there is a lot of Mrs. Freeburg still in this world, and the world is better for it.