JR

November 22, 1995-November 8, 2018

You'll be missed. Your sense of humor, wisdom beyond your years, endless curiosity and combination of humility and compassion combined to create a remarkable human. 

A former student of mine, JR, like many of my former students, didn't give a shit about math. She showed up and remained open minded, and did the best she could, but her heart was elsewhere. Namely, English. She was majoring in English in college and would often lament to me that she had zero hopes of ever being employable. "What do I put on my resume?" she asked recently, "Studied how to read for four years?" This had been much on her mind lately, as graduation approached. Her Facebook status of November 2, six days before she died: can’t wait to finish my degree so that i can look for jobs and tell them that i’ve been formally trained in reading books.

Some other recent posts of hers:

I found out about her death from reading another former student's post on Facebook. He wrote that he had found out, while on break at work, that one of his best friends, JR, had died. Her name went right by me and I just felt compassion for the guy. Then, many seconds later, it began to dawn on me that he was talking about JR.

Having been a teacher for more than 30 years, I have gone through the experience of young people dying many times. It always just seems impossible to me. In spite of knowing the truth of impermanence and the inevitability of death, when someone in their teens or 20's dies, it always seems surreal to me, like it was not "supposed" to happen. 

Apparently, JR had a seizure that resulted in an accident that killed her. I don't know any of the other details. 

She was one of the examples of why I love remaining friends with the most interesting of my former students. It's one of the great blessings of having been a teacher, especially of adolescents. I find many young people to be a lot more interesting than people my age. She embodied a lot of the reasons why that is so. There's a freshness, unfettered wisdom, strength and resilience in all of my favorite people, but especially in a lot of young people these days. It amazes me when older people judge and criticize, usually out of ignorance, the generations that are on the way up. In fact, these are decent, humane, creative, wise people, ready to change the world in their own ways. JR fit that bill perfectly. 

Maybe in JR heaven, it'll be books and funny memes forever.