What was your high school's tragedy? We had this one teacher. She was the Quest teacher.

It was a health class, basically. She talked about sexual education and the dangers of smoking,

that sort of thing. We got to sit on couches in a big circle rather than desks in rows.

She sadly contracted breast cancer, and it was pretty bad. She went bald from the chemo and had a port

installed on her chest so they could just inject into that since they had already destroyed all the

veins on her arms and whatnot. Despite all this hardship, she was one of the warmest, sweetest,

most cheerful and most loving people I have ever met. I'll always remember one particular

thing that she said. She talked about going to a

friend's funeral recently. The friend had died and agonizing and slow death from cancer. My teacher

wore a brightly colored floral pattern dress while everyone else was wearing black. She did this because

she was not mourning. She was celebrating the end of her friend's suffering. She had accepted

death and made peace with it, and knew that it was just the natural course of life. She died

a year later and the whole school was devastated, and I made sure to wear bright colors.

I think that was actually rather beautiful. It's a natural thing as people to either deal

with the death of those we love or our

own expiration, but the fact of the matter is death is a natural part of life that we simply have to

accept at some time or another. A girl named Joy, who was insanely happy and nice and popular,

had an aneurism and died. She was uncharacteristically mean that day and told everyone

she had a headache. It happened in the hallway and she just kind of slumped against the lockers.

We found her when classes let out. One kid said, Joyce here in the hall. A huge jock dude picked

her up and took her to the nurse and someone called 911. She had been dead for some time by then. Saddest thing

I ever saw. She was the sweetest person. Ain't lunch with the special kids a few times a month?

...