English Teacher

Early this year my high school English teacher, from more years ago than I like to calculate, called me to say: look me up next time you’re in town.

The town is Detroit, where I grew up. I get back there most Septembers to see my mom, and to check in with a handful of others. My old teacher and I have stayed in touch over the years, on and off, and her call was neither unusual nor out of the blue.

This teacher, back in what some people like to call “the day,” had apparently seen something worthwhile in the anguished teen prose I used to turn in. She began thwarting my tendency to skip class by urging me to go to the school library instead, and write whatever I felt like. I had never written much, before that.

When my father died two Septembers ago, I restricted that year’s fall visit to his funeral. But I had been to Detroit in July, too; my dad was increasingly frail and the end was plainly getting close, so I wanted to say my goodbyes. I saw my English teacher then. I’d already begun writing the eulogy I assumed I’d be asked to deliver at my dad’s funeral, and read her a draft. A bit like old times.

•

This year I flew into Detroit on a Thursday evening with a rough idea of how I’d be spending the next few days. I expected it to include a visit with my old teacher, but thus far had been unable to reach her. I’d left her a voice mail the preceding Monday but she hadn’t called back yet. I tried again on Wednesday and still couldn’t reach her.

On Friday morning, by then in Motown, I called her a third time. Still no answer. In my bones, I sensed something wrong. Her house is only a few miles from my mom’s, so I decided on the direct approach and drove over that afternoon.

I parked along the tree-lined street in front of her house in a quiet Detroit suburb – the same house she lived in since way back. Signs of life: a car in the driveway, and trash cans hauled to the curb. A porch light burned, which seemed odd at that hour. Otherwise, a picture of normality.

She preferred people coming to the side door but no one answered my knock. I knocked again – again no answer. I walked around to the front and knocked, then rang the bell. Still nothing. My apprehension increased.

Across the street, an older man pulled a cord to start a lawn mower, then began pushing it across the lawn. Aside from that the neighborhood was still.

I walked to the house next door and rang the bell. The guy who answered didn’t know anything. This is my sister’s house, he said, and she isn’t home. I’m visiting from Chicago.

So I crossed the street and got the attention of the lawn mower guy. And who are you? he asked. I explained as succinctly as possible and it satisfied him. Yes, he knew my teacher. He mowed her lawn, too. I’m sorry to tell you this, he said, but she had a stroke last weekend and is in hospice care at William Beaumont Hospital.

Saddened, but not all that surprised, I drove back to my mom’s and pondered my next move. The direct approach had worked so far, so I called the hospital, got transferred two or three times, and finally reached my teacher’s room. Her daughter answered and confirmed what the lawn mower guy said. Would visiting be a bad idea? I asked. No, she said. A good idea, in fact. And within half an hour I pulled into the hospital parking structure, walked inside, and took the elevator up to the sixth floor.

I found my teacher confined to bed, very weak and tired, and only semi-responsive. Half her face sagged. Our conversation was anything but ordinary and I won’t recount it all. I wondered if she’d even know it was me. It became clear that she did. We held hands. She told me she loved me. I told her I loved her.

“I’m not exactly Shakespeare,” I said. “But I’ve been paid to write one thing or another for most of my working life. And your encouragement, way back when, made all the difference.”

A nurse came into the room and took my teacher’s vitals. The objective now, the nurse said, is to keep her comfortable. Comfortable has never sounded more ominous.

I stayed for about an hour. That night I attended a baseball-themed party in a downtown Detroit bar. I don’t drink much and am not an overly social animal, but had a much better time than I anticipated. A great time, in fact. I think I needed the contrast.

•

On Sunday afternoon I visited my father’s grave. I didn’t bring flowers. I didn’t pull weeds, I didn’t talk to him, I didn’t mourn. I just sat there. It was my first time there since the funeral, but it felt almost routine.

His grave is at the bottom of a gentle slope in a quiet, bucolic boneyard. There’s a large stone ten feet or so from the grave, ideal for sitting, and it occurred to me, as I sat down, that mine must be the umpteen-zillionth ass to warm that rock over who knows how many years.

A great calm settled over me and, it seemed, my very surroundings. My thoughts wandered far and wide, as they only seem to do at such times. I admired the trees. I listened to the birds. I noticed the logic to what at first had seemed a haphazard arrangement of all those neighboring headstones, and began to read some of the names: Wood, Springer, Rogers, Meade, Warren, Kennedy, Van Deun, Goodyear, Drutchas, and Jones.

Of course there was a Jones.

Then I looked a little closer at one of those headstones. May 1971 - November 2002. Beloved daughter. Devoted mother.

Thirty-one years.

Directly across from this headstone was a granite bench, engraved to the same young woman. My Angel, I Love You, Dad. I Love You Mom, Justin.

My dad was eighty-eight when he died. My mom is ninety-one and still going. I don’t know my former teacher’s age, but she’s probably coming up on eighty.

That headstone and bench offered no clue, of course, to the cause of that young woman’s death. Only the stark reminder that for any of us, the end may arrive at any time – at any age, and for any reason, or for no reason. I left the cemetery with a powerful need to contact the living, those people who mean the most to me, to remind them I love them.

Postscript: My teacher died on September 16, 2018, two days after I saw her.