In 2019, I had an outstanding young man in my Socratic Seminar class. I'd had his older brother and had kept in sporadic touch with him since he'd graduated. I had loved him, now it was time to love his brother.
He wasn't always prepared, but he had a certain intelligence and an ability to relate to his peers. He was well respected, so much that when he spoke, everyone listened. He was often the last word; but not always. Sometimes I would ask him to explain, or to go deeper in his thoughts. You could tell he wasn't used to having to further think. It threw him. It was good for him. I knew he appreciated the challenge because he told another teacher that I was the only one who pushed him.
He had such a command of language and personal relationships that I often thought of him as a young John F Kennedy. He could have chosen politics and been successful.
The young man graduated and went on to college. While in this phase, he'd bought a long-longed-for---longboard. And one day, he slipped out for a ride, and somehow crashed in a tunnel slamming his head into a concrete wall.
For days, he hung between life and death. He stayed in a coma. He slowly came out of the coma, and life began all over again. He had to learn to walk, talk, and think. He'd lost part of his eyesight, his hearing, and some of his cognitive abilities.
His mother kept an IG page and I would check it periodically to see how he was doing. It was always a fight. And the young man knew how to fight. After a few years, he could bike, hike, and live on his own, but he never returned to who he had been. He became a new person and fought to create a meaningful life. He was a guest speaker at traumatic brain injury conferences. He spoke to encourage others with limitations. He became an advocate, a witness for the importance of wearing a helmet while skateboarding and biking.
He kept fighting--all the while in recognition how much had been lost.
And then the unthinkable happened. The young man was hit by a truck and instantly killed. His fight was over.
His family planned a Celebration of his Life! It will be held at a park in the mountains on Tuesday morning. I was hoping the day would work for me. I really wanted to go and hear all the things I didn't know about his struggles and triumphs. I really wanted to see and hug his older brother, his younger sister, both of them past students. But alas, I will be out of the country.
So I contacted his older brother. Told him I'd been thinking about him, his brother and his sister, and that I really wanted to help celebrate his life but wouldn't be able to.
His brother wrote back, Thank you Mrs. Martinez. You can celebrate his life anywhere.
That's an absolute.
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