The First Day of School

It would have been the first day of my last year teaching school, the last year at the school where I had spent my professional life, at the job that had provided for our family for decades, had given us health and dental insurance, had allowed me to push myself as a learner and as a professional, a place where I had made friends and instructed at least a thousand children. It was on this day we got a call. You had been in the hospital for two weeks, your kidneys and liver were breaking down and you were being put on hospice. You had a woman there, someone who had been smitten by you, someone who was at your side the entire time. In addition, she was comfortably set and was a former nurse. How convenient for you. I remember that while you were still with me and I had received a 1099 in the mail from a casino, I had asked you to look around the poker table the next time you were there and figure out which one of those people was going to be giving you your morphine shots when your time came. How I had underestimated you! You were never one to see limitations. You knew you would be more resourceful than that. You knew you would be able to find someone to care for you and that you would have other places to look than in a casino. As soon as you moved to the desert, you joined a cancer support club and there she was----WHAM!---newly-widowed, very, very lonely and very, very vulnerable. You had no worries about missing me and my caregiving or anything else, I could then just become a target for your greed. She was much more qualified for this job than I could have ever been. Maybe she was a step up. On your release from the hospital, you were being sent to her home. She had cleared out a bedroom for you. She and the hospice nurses would take care of you but you were not being told you were being put on hospice. Laura called me and asked if I could watch the baby. When she arrived at the house she told me the news. I cried. She cried. Kyle looked confused.