The Daily Riff - BE SMARTER. ABOUT EDUCATION.

We often forget the many teachers in our lives.  They are not just in a school classroom.   

Excerpt from The Los Angeles Times Opinion page, "What We Remember On Memorial Day":

Generations
by Amy Wilentz

"Losing your parents makes you feel old; I got old early.

My mother died in 1989 when I was still in my 30s, and my father in 1996. I was a fully grown adult, or so I thought. It should have been just a normal rite of passage. You grow up, and then your parents die; that's what happens. But I wasn't ready.

When my mother died, I wasn't married, wasn't sure what my work would be, hadn't yet published my first book, hadn't provided any grandchildren.

When my father died seven years later, the reminders of this double loss were everywhere. By then I had children, and I felt a stab of jealousy every time a friend invited Nana and Gramps to a baby's first birthday party or asked Gigi and Poppy to admire a cute new dress. Someone's mother, I would hear, was taking the grandchildren on a special trip, and I ached for my own and my children's loss. . . "

For link to article, click HERE.

For another related post on this theme, The Daily Riff featured one by English teacher Jim Burke, titled, "We Are All A Part Of The Puzzle".

                                                                                ---C.J. Westerberg