“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
-Robert Browning
My dear friend, Amy, passed away twenty years ago in September. The following tribute is long overdue. I meant to type it and send it to Erin, her daughter, after her funeral, but I succumbed to procrastination. I tucked it into an old folder, which I recently discovered while looking for something else.
When I became the district reading coordinator, I shared an office at the high school with Amy, the SOAR (Student Options and Resources) coordinator. I sat down at my new chair on the first day, the tall former reading specialist’s old desk, with my feet dangling several inches above the floor. I stared at the strange computer, wondering ‘what have I done?’ and trying not to panic. Amy bounded in the room, showed me how to adjust the chair, turn on the computer, and how to live the unique life of a district coordinator where no two days were ever alike.
Amy found the humor in every situation, the spark of inspiration in others, the good in every child. People were always drawn to her because she was so full of energy and fun. When she entered the room, all negativity disappeared with her smile. She was my colleague, my mentor, my friend. Amy would always listen to you, no matter what problem you had or what was going wrong. Moreover, she’d help problem solve, take action, and make the situation better. She created the silver lining in your darkest cloud.
Learning was an adventure with Amy. To teach co-operation skills to second graders, her theme was: Feel like one of the bunch. So she dressed up with another teacher in purple balloons like a bunch of grapes, only the balloons popped when they moved. The kids exploded with laughter. In one of our joint writing lessons on description, Paint a picture with words, Amy became a French painter, Too Loose La Truck, who ran out of paint. I appeared as Wonder Word Woman to show him words can create a picture too. Her last major project was teaming a second grade class with a gifted high school musician to create a HIP HOPERA about the Three Little Pigs.
Amy loved to laugh with a natural gift for story-telling. Her horse-back riding adventure sounded like a female version of City Slickers, including literally falling on her nose. One Thanksgiving dinner she cooked a turducken, with disastrous results. We heard about her daughter Courtney’s performance test for her cosmetology license. While styling her dummy’s hair, Courtney gave a vigorous brush stroke, knocking the head off the stand which rolled across the floor, coming to rest at the judge’s feet. Who could forget her first dinner at hubby Bob’s bachelor apartment? He was going to prepare the meal, but got busy, so she volunteered to cook. He told her the meat was in the fridge, so Amy opened the door expecting to see a roast or some steaks. Instead, she found a little carcass resembling a skinned cat. She bravely took it out and cooked her first gourmet raccoon.
However, when the situation called for firmness, Amy could be tough. At a high school curriculum meeting, a veteran English teacher kept interrupting our work with inappropriate jokes and side conversations. Amy warned him in an unflinching tone, if he wasn’t going to take improving student outcomes seriously, he should leave the meeting. He immediately cooperated. This toughness served her well through life’s trials.
I was with Amy when she first admitted something was wrong physically. We’d attended a weekend writing conference and stopped for lunch Saturday on the way home. It was a lovely spring day. I remember so clear she was unable to finish her mushroom sandwich. “A case of indigestion,” she said. “Just a bad tummy ache.” By Sunday, the pain was so intense. she had Bob take her to the emergency room. She called to tell me. Cervical cancer. A growth so large the doctor was operating on Monday.
Amy faced the bleak prognosis with her usual humor and courage. When she lost her hair, she said she was asked to choose either a bad wig, a scarf with a bit of troll hair sticking out, or a turban that made her look like she belonged on the psychic hotline. Amy decided bald was better. I still have her holiday card with Merry Christmas written on her and Bob’s shiny hairless pates!
Even when she was undergoing chemotherapy, Amy lived her life to the fullest. She drove to the forty minutes to work despite the effects of chemo numbing her hands so she couldn’t feel the steering wheel. She stayed late to listen to an overwhelmed substitute teacher and help her set up an email account. A high school student needed a trusted adult’s assistance to talk to her parents. Amy went with her after school to lend support. She helped a teen-age foster child with lunch money, new glasses, and a caring adult’s response to his difficulties. Amy carried on with superhuman effort until she became too weak to continue work and applied for long-term disability.
We sat down one day and created her bucket list with all the outlandish things Amy still wanted to do—ride in a hot air balloon, swim with dolphins in Bermuda, to name a few. We brainstormed who could date Bob when she was gone, because she didn’t want him to live the rest of his life alone. She wanted her daughters to be happy and secure in their lives, Erin with Alan, her fiancé, and Courtney in her career as a stylist. She knew she wouldn’t be around to hold her grandbabies. She was only 52. Her mother and father also passed away at a young age.
Amy touched so many lives. The high school student newspaper titled her memorial, Educator with a Vision. She left a legacy for Watertown children with cross grade level events: Pioneer Days, Civil War re-enactments, Elementary Author’s Teas where High School orchestra students provided music. She established a support group for GT parents. She developed the independent study program for high school. She was a resource for ideas and materials. Her office door was always open to students and colleagues. Her light shone. We forgot our fears in her presence and only thought about the possible, not the impossible. Our friendship ended much too soon. Yet those three years with Amy stand out in my memory as three of the happiest in my thirty years of teaching.
I went with another friend to see Amy in hospice care. Her face was pale, the skin stretched tight over her beautiful cheekbones, her eyes glowed with dimming light. She told us about the wonderful spa where she felt relief from the warm water, and the kindness of her caregivers. Her room was filled personal momentos of a well-lived life: pictures of her beautiful daughters, her and Bob, fragrant flowers, and a painting done by one of her gifted students. When we rose to leave, I hugged her too thin body, and she whispered, “Please don’t come back.”
I felt bereft until Erin gave me Amy’s final present at her funeral, a silver pendent that opened with a message from Amy on a tiny scroll. Although the ink has faded in twenty years, I can still read the careful handwriting. Love lives forever. Laughter echoes always. I wear it close to my heart, and remember Amy.
Janice Detrie 