Very rough day

I had some sad news today, and I didn't smoke. In fact, I actually thought a few hours later, "Dang, I didn't get a chance to tell her I quit smoking." And she would've loved it.

A dear old friend of the family, who was also my high school drama coach, died yesterday. I actually hadn't talked to her recently. The last time I heard from her was in an email in 2002 when she was retiring from teaching at the high school. (She went on to teach and direct at the local college in her "retirement.") She wondered if I still had my teaching certificate. She was trying to find a replacement for herself.

There is no replacement for her.

Teachers touch so many lives; it's cliched to say that she influenced hundreds of people through her years of teaching. But -- for me, she was more than a teacher and a director. She was literally a friend of my mother's. I didn't just have to toe the line in class or on the stage -- I was gonna run into Pat at dinner or when my mother was walking all summer long for her health.

When I first heard about this, I was empty. I was speechless. I literally sat for many seconds and couldn't think of anything to say.

Late in the afternoon, I drove half an hour south to buy a newspaper with an article about her. And on the way, I told my daughter the story of how Pat was a power-hungry, controlling megalomaniac who exerted her will over young actors and actresses without mercy, and how I broke her record when I turned out to be the only person in my high school who could sing well enough to be Peter Pan.

At the end of my awful story, Emily asked me, "Why did you go visit her if you didn't like her?"

And I said, "Because she had all the power, and I had to pay homage."

Hours later -- as I sit at my sad little second-hand desk and pound out my blog entry -- I realize, no, it was more than all the power that Pat wielded to keep me running back to her every few years to beg for a favor. It was that -- no matter what -- no matter how big or small -- no matter how long it had been since I had done anything nice for *her* -- if I called Pat and asked her to help me, she always did.

She always did.

She designed the set of the first play I ever directed; she let me use her theatre at the high school for practically nothing; she always helped me design my lighting schemes; and once she let me walk into her years-collected, vast array of a costume closet, and she let me take whatever I wanted, and she let me *wreck* those costumes with alterations.

And she never asked for anything in return. Except once, she emailed me and told me to be nicer to my oldest sister, the difficult one, the one who drives me the craziest, and for that reason alone, I haven't talked to Pat in about five years.

It's not fair.

I always thought I would have more time to figure out what to say to her.

And she's gone.

She would've loved it that I'm not smoking, so I can't break down now and have a cigarette.

(I made the sign that still hangs in the make-up room at the high school theatre. It reads, "Smoke Not, Thou Sinner, Thou!" That sign has hung there since 1983. I started smoking in 1985.)

Gah, I miss her.