Lights Out

Hi All,

My short story is below.  It is about the unfortunately-too-early passing of my high school football coach, Coach Smith.  He was a great man and I had always wanted to commemorate his life with my first official written piece of work.  I hope you enjoy my story.

Lights Out by Zach Miller

Coach Smith died in a freak car accident the summer before my senior year and I didn’t cry.  He was my high school football coach and it was one of the last weekends before school began.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to cry, as a matter of fact I tried to make myself cry numerous times.  I even wondered how I could remain so indifferent at his viewing in the midst of hundreds of tear-soaked mourners.  Was something wrong with me?

Here is a man who was first a mentor, a father, a husband, a Christian, a humanitarian, and a leader before he was a coach.  He has deeply touched an infinite number of lives, he is beloved by all who have gotten to know him, and yet I couldn’t shed a single tear.

When it was my turn to pay my respects, the line to see him was hundreds of people long, I was sure that the sight of his now lifeless body would bring me to tears instantly.  I had been to funerals before but I could not recall any of them.  They were the funerals that your parents made you go to where all of the adults were sad or crying while all of the dressed up children were playing games and wondering what was for lunch later on that afternoon.  I didn’t belong there.

The only thing that kept my immense amount of shame at bay were the memories of Coach Smith and how patient and understanding he was.  I remember thinking, “If he were here right now he’d know what to do.  He’d share a story that would help to lift my spirits and show me that I wasn’t stupid for not crying.”  Either that or he’d just put his arm around my shoulders and say, “It’s okay son, it’s okay.”  Still, no tears.  No tears for the man who unknowingly changed my life forever.  Although I didn’t know it at the time, I would later become a teacher who shared his overwhelming passion to work with troubled youth and to change lives as they say.  Not change that came about by fire-and-brimstone but change that occurred easily and eloquently as if it was a part of nature.

Coach Smith would always begin his after-practice speeches the same way, “Gentlemen gentlemen,” he’d quickly say.  He addressed us this way because to him we were gentle men.  Gentle men in the sense that we were fragile young adults a million miles away from childhood yet another million miles away from adulthood.  It’s as if crying at that moment represented the loss of innocence and a jump towards maturity.  However there I stood unable to leap over the ledge.

My senior football season went by dryly until I played the last game of my high school football career.  I hadn’t forgotten about never crying and as I walked off of the field for my last time, I remembered watching the crowd leaving the stands, not in their usual ruckus and indifference, but somberly as if they were at a funeral.  The crowd was aware that this was the end of a season we’d never forget.  The end didn’t trigger the usual emotions of hope for next year because this ending had no next year.  This is what they knew and what I was beginning to figure out.

It was not then that I cried, but it was the first time since Coach Smith’s accident that I began to let it all go.  I stopped trying to make sense of the anger, the shame, the pity, and the guilt that had tormented me for so long and simply allowed myself to feel them.  The moment did not feel as poignant as it was; for it is only through reflection that I have been able to piece this together.  At that moment I was still the boy who couldn’t cry, but now I was beginning to accept it.

I went into the locker room with the rest of the team to undress, turn in my uniform, and pack up all of my belongings.  I distinctly recall my teammates laughing and having a good time and it made me sick to my stomach.  Not for them but for myself.  The smell of earth and stale sweat, a smell which I was all too familiar with, seemed to distinctly bother me at that moment; further tightening the knots in my stomach.  Then I began to go numb to it all.  It was as if all of this happened around me yet did not include me.  I was only able to see the events, not be a part of them.  Something was gaining great momentum within me.

When I reached for my t-shirt I was suddenly overcome with whatever it was that had a hold of me.  My hand was unable to grasp my shirt and it fell onto the front of my chair then carelessly careened over the edge.  I had to get out of that locker room immediately.  I made my way inconspicuously to the door and slid outside to the bleachers.  I am reminded of my amazement at the emptiness of the stadium.  I was literally all alone sitting on the corner of the stands.  I took in the unusually warm night air trying to calm the knots in my stomach.  The stillness of the scene, the smell of the sod, and the darkness of the sky overwhelmed and awed me.  The stadium lights pierced tunnels of white into the blue indifference of the cosmos.  At that moment I knew what was to come and I wanted so bad to think of something meaningful or profound to say but nothing came to me.  Just silence.  All at once, the lights went out and I was left alone in the dark.  I cried.

-Dedicated to the memory of Coach Smith and the Smith family

My daughter Virginia was an organ and tissue donor when she was two days old, in 2004. I know that her heart went to an eight month old girl who lived in Ohio at the time of the donation. I could write a letter and send it to Lifeline of Ohio, to be sent to the recipient family, and if both my family and the recipients wanted to, we could meet. I've sat down many, many times to write that letter and just couldn't find the right words to convey everything Ginny meant and still means to me. So I never have.

Today I walked in the Dash for Donation, which is a 5k to raise money and awareness for organ donation put together by Lifeline of Ohio. I decorated a race bib with "My daughter Ginny gave her heart". During the race another runner noticed my bib and came over to thank me because her daughter was a heart recipient. We chatted for a few minutes while we walked, and I found out that her daughter was 11, and therefore too old to have been Ginny's heart recipient.

I struggled throughout our brief conversation with the competing urges to ask when the donation had occurred to see if the girl had received Ginny's heart, or to just not know. I realized that I didn't want to know. I don't have elaborate fantasies about the child who carries Ginny's heart, or imagine what her life is like (very much).  I do surreptitiously look at the children around me when I participate in Lifeline events, and even check the dates on the various posters, buttons, and t-shirts that people wear to announce their connection to organ donation. I haven't run across the recipient family yet, but I also don't yearn to meet them.

I think people are surprised when they ask if I know the recipient family and find out that I don't have a strong desire to meet them. They probably imagine some wonderful heartfelt scene where the girl and her family thank me profusely for the extraordinary gift they received. But after that initial scene, it would be awkward. Very awkward. Because after they share the amazing things that ___ was able to do because she received a heart transplant from Ginny, what could I say to move the conversation along? "Yeah, she sure kicked a lot..." They probably don't want to hear about her birth, or the horrible days in the hospital while we waited to hear her fate. They've lived through that tragic scene, but their ending was different-happy.

I don't get the fairytale ending. I never get to hold my little girl again, smell her hair, kiss her head, whisper that I love her. I never had the opportunity to give her a bath, dress her up in sweet dresses, watch her grow up. I've accepted that, but it still hurts every day to know that she's gone forever.

It helps tremendously to know that another mother doesn't have to go through this pain because of Ginny, and another little girl is alive. Her life wasn't in vain, she made a difference. Not just to me and my family and friends, but to others in the world. I share Ginny's story often, and encourage people to be organ and tissue donors. It hurts a little bit less to know that a piece of Ginny is out there, her heart beating inside another child's chest.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

- e. e. cummings ~

(Complete Poems, 1904-1962)

Grades

As a supervisor for middle childhood student teachers (interns), I have to review their lesson plans and give feedback on them. I'm completely fine with that, and honored that this quarter they are seeking more of my advice and feedback.

At a recent supervisor's meeting, I was given a rubric that I was supposed to use to evaluate and grade my interns' lesson plans. I thought it was a really dumb idea, as the point of me looking at lesson plans isn't to assign a grade, but to help them improve. Grades, to me, denote an evaluation of the end product-not a work in progress that lesson plans always are.

My second issue is that one of the categories on the rubric asks how the lesson will be assessed, and requires that each lesson have a pre-, post-, and formative assessment, with a point system already determined. Clearly whoever designed this rubric hasn't actually taught in a classroom. While every unit or section will have these types of assessments, not every daily lesson is going to be able to incorporate all of these factors. And yes, if you are using a backwards planning design you should theoretically have your final assessment determined before implementing the unit. But that's for the unit, not the daily activities. Because let's be honest, in a 48 minute period, after checking or collecting homework, reviewing what's already been covered, and then wrapping up at the end to make sure students "got" what you wanted them to "get", you might only get 20 minutes of actual work time.

As a PhD student, I have to come to grips with not receiving grades until (possibly) the class is completely done. We are on week six out of ten of the current quarter, and I have not been "graded" on anything I have turned in to any professor so far. I've gotten reams of feedback and adjusted my reading and writing to incorporate that feedback into my work, but no A for effort. I assume that my professors will let me know if I'm failing miserably, and I attend every class and do all of the things listed in the syllabus, but I just don't know. And that's okay. Because my doctoral work is about reading, writing about what I've read and what I think about what I've read and how it affects my life and teaching practice, and then...teaching others what I've learned. It's a lot of writing, and I expect to get much better at it as I progress through my degree program.

I wish school was less about what letter grade you received, or how "smart" you are compared to the "norm", and more about the journey of learning. Because no matter where we start, we are smarter today than we were yesterday. Even though I am working toward a PhD, a terminal degree, I will be learning every day for the rest of my life. Some days I may only learn what not to do, but that's okay. As long as I learn something, my day will have been a success.