Mandy
Tonight I got home from the cabaret and hopped on Facebook to catch up on the daily friends news, when I got a message from Aron, one of my former students who has always kept in touch with me these many years. Unfortunately it was rather sad news about a friend of his who passed away this week. In the course of conversation he told me that his friend, who was quite young, died of complications of cystic fibrosis.
My cousin Lynn has CF and has a lot of friends in the CF community, both locally and online, so I asked Aron for his friend's name, thinking perhaps Lynn might know them.
The friend turned out to be Mandy W. I knew Mandy. She was in my homeroom two years after I taught Aron. The minute he said her name, her face came back to me, even though I have not seen Mandy in 15 years. She was a sweet kid, freckle faced with short brown hair and a reluctant smile, who got along with everybody. One of those unobtrusive kids who was just a good student and easy to have in class. I remember her mom, who was a nice lady, and our conversations about CF since I had two cousins with it and knew what Mandy was dealing with.
The thing is, Mandy, like my cousin Lynn, was a sick kid who didn't look sick for most of her life. You would never have guessed she had a life-threatening illness to see her, because she looked like all the other kids in class and never called attention to herself. She sat in the back row, and was easy going and one of those kids I could place next to the worst boy in the class and Mandy would just do her work and ignore the antics of the goofballs and yet not take any stuff off of them either.
I am sad that that smiling little girl has left this world. I was telling Dove about it and she wanted to see Mandy's picture from the yearbook, and as I was showing it to her, the faces of so many other kids I'd forgotten about came back to me. Victor, the little brother of Crystal who was one of my all time favorite students, who went through chemo for bone cancer when I had him. Harry, who was afraid of his dad. Kia, who was three years older than all the other kids and so doped up on psychotropic drugs when she came to school that she was all but unintelligible most days. I hope that they all turned out to have good lives.
Mandy was a little light who floated through my classroom so many years ago. I hope she's still full of light and not so reluctant smiles now, and that she's breathing easy finally.
My cousin Lynn has CF and has a lot of friends in the CF community, both locally and online, so I asked Aron for his friend's name, thinking perhaps Lynn might know them.
The friend turned out to be Mandy W. I knew Mandy. She was in my homeroom two years after I taught Aron. The minute he said her name, her face came back to me, even though I have not seen Mandy in 15 years. She was a sweet kid, freckle faced with short brown hair and a reluctant smile, who got along with everybody. One of those unobtrusive kids who was just a good student and easy to have in class. I remember her mom, who was a nice lady, and our conversations about CF since I had two cousins with it and knew what Mandy was dealing with.
The thing is, Mandy, like my cousin Lynn, was a sick kid who didn't look sick for most of her life. You would never have guessed she had a life-threatening illness to see her, because she looked like all the other kids in class and never called attention to herself. She sat in the back row, and was easy going and one of those kids I could place next to the worst boy in the class and Mandy would just do her work and ignore the antics of the goofballs and yet not take any stuff off of them either.
I am sad that that smiling little girl has left this world. I was telling Dove about it and she wanted to see Mandy's picture from the yearbook, and as I was showing it to her, the faces of so many other kids I'd forgotten about came back to me. Victor, the little brother of Crystal who was one of my all time favorite students, who went through chemo for bone cancer when I had him. Harry, who was afraid of his dad. Kia, who was three years older than all the other kids and so doped up on psychotropic drugs when she came to school that she was all but unintelligible most days. I hope that they all turned out to have good lives.
Mandy was a little light who floated through my classroom so many years ago. I hope she's still full of light and not so reluctant smiles now, and that she's breathing easy finally.