My Language is Hope
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I started All Good Things as a resignation letter from my job: I used the SEO: “A former special needs educator faces a rare disease, using writing to learn to live with disability in this next chapter of life.”
All Good Things began as a transition to a new chapter of my life where illness left me unable to do what I went to college for, and loved (some days more than others, but teaching was etched into my being. Leaving a job is sometimes easy. Sometimes it is hard. And sometimes the moon eclipses the sun as you reluctantly stumble into the next season of your life, unsure of what comes next. When I left full-time teaching, the words: “This letter serves as my resignation, effective at the end of my contract” was not how I wanted that season of my life to end.
The words. The language. Harsh. You’re breaking up with someone. You’re breaking up with a community. How do you soothe that with language?
“Best” or “Regards” did not encompass the love I felt for my role in the middle school I had grown to feel needed at. Actually, we needed each other. I wrote the letter on my phone, embarrassingly the first sentence said: “This is my letter of RECOGNITION.” I had to backtrack with a follow-up email since it was a Friday evening. How to sign off though?
“All Good Things,”
Jonathan
A simple comma, no exclamation point, no period, but a breath to shift into my unknown summer, and oh what a summer, fall, and winter it is. I am ill, but you knew that. It feels very odd to say that because I’m just sitting at my computer, kitten sleeping beside me, the television on in the background. Life goes on; a new chapter began and I lost my language on Lake Street and 7th Avenue as I sat belted into the passenger seat of my car. I knew illness could take my voice, but a car crash?
In the blink of an eye, our lives can change. That is not hyperbole. The cane that held my body ceased to work. The signals that sent language to my mouth ceased to function properly.
My language. I’m an actor, a teacher in my heart, and a writer. But my language. My nuances. They hid behind the sun.
All good things don’t necessarily end, they change like the seasons.
Winter came in the fall and spring emerged as I reentered the building as a substitute teacher; something my body could handle. I watched my replacement teaching my kids. It’s possible to hear a tear in the heart. You don’t feel it until after it has happened. She rearranged my room…her room. I remind myself this was my choice. I spin the wheel as I push through the doors in my wheelchair, wondering where I will land when the kids enter the science room I’m subbing in.
“Hello. You may have heard I was in a car accident. I am learning to speak again. Until then, I will use this computer to help me speak” comes from the Bluetooth speaker connected to my computer in the science classroom as I use text-to-speech. I try to laugh. LOL is not laughing when I try out my dad jokes without nuance. My principal who got a laugh out of my typo (from the ELA teacher of all people) stood by my side to make sure I was okay.
For the first time, my students were silent even when he left the room. Mr. S’s room was always a little bit rambunctious.
I heard, “We love you” from little big voices as my 7th and 8th graders made the heart symbol over their chest. And suddenly I knew spring was coming. Maybe not how I envisioned it, but spring just the same. I told my friend and colleague that when I have second thoughts about sending my resignation: did my body have one more sustainable year in it as a teacher? Perhaps a higher power, for me ,God, for you, whomever or whatever that power may be, must have known that at 2:56 pm on October 27, my world would change and I would need time to recover.
All good things don’t necessarily end, they change like the seasons. But…
I held a conversation this weekend for 90 minutes.
I saw my speech therapist for 45 minutes yesterday. She understood every word. I do not sound like I did, but how could I? Life takes time. I feel it, trust me; I felt it using my cane to climb a flight of steps on Saturday. Spring will come and I won’t have even realized. Nuance will return.
“A former special needs educator faces a rare disease, using writing to learn to live with disability in this next chapter of life.” That statement may be the truest thing I have felt in a long while. I am learning my language again. I am learning to articulate the life I had and how the past will influence the future. Hope. My Language. My Language is Hope.
I was at the airport over the holidays and as special services were wheeling me through the terminal, I attempted to say: “I was a teacher.” The statement was more for me than him. I remember I had life before diagnosis, before the accident, before teaching, before 24 years of adulthood went by, and I will have life again. But one thing I will not tell people is: “You must have hope. You must not give up.” I’ve heard that at least 20 times this week. Instead, I offer my stories and say: this is your journey, your language. Me? I speak in Hope. I must.
All Good Things,
Jonathan
