the candle for the Unknown Andy?
Maybe it doesn't matter which it is: my sister, my student, or the student with the
exact same name as my student who went to the
exact same college as my student who did in fact die this morning after the four-student car wreck, after two days of being brain dead, me -devastated all the while for the loss of Andy Hoover who had been
just right there!!.
Impossible to be in a coma now. Impossible to be dead soon....! And all this emotion I had in trying to understand how life could be snatched away like that from MY student, when it was from another Andy Hoover, who I'm sure I would have cared about as I do, inevitably for every student I work with for any bit of time.
Guess we're all just Andy's in the end; fragile and vulnerable as little twigs and cared for
much more and by more than we'd ever suspect.
And of course, I remember dear Tristan. Nothing can ever make that brutal, senseless murder, that loss of such a funny, quirky
love a person make any sense. Maybe I'll just let the picture below burn in his memory. It must have been five years now. Four? Perhaps to this day, certainly this time of year. How I loved that kid! How it killed me to hear of his impossible death. I still remember his drawing of the water fountain he drew as he confided his feelings about no longer being a boy - one brief week before he got punched in the head over nothing. There was a treasure. Dead at 19 was it? 20? Never to leave boyhood, really.
One upshot of all this though has been to underscore for me how lucky I am to teach, to meet all these individuals and try to find and foster their peculiarities and insights. To be impressed by them, and taught by them, to see, everyday, how utterly unique each person is. No less true for the seemingly unremarkable, or reticent, or the testy even. All irreplaceable, heart-breaking to lose.
So, is the below a prayer answered?
It could seem like it, for me and the others who worked with Andy Hoover2.
Certainly not for all.
