Bridges. Of course that was your thing. Building a path across an obstacle. “Nothing is hard, just challenging” you’d tell us again and again till we’d rub some dirt it in and get our asses back out on the field. I didn’t last at teaching as long as I intended but you are a big part of why I lasted as long as I did.

You’d tell us all kinds of funky universe cosmic stuff, like which element you thought we were and how you were mostly wood…but also fire and water and sometimes metal and earth and then you’d set out raising the bar so high for the world that it seemed like the first rung was just never going to lead to the second rung and so on. We loved you too much to disappoint you and in our own ways we tried, so very hard, to be the people you believed us to be. These were the bridges you built here, the steadfast belief in our baby steps leading from one place to another, sometimes up and sometimes sideways and every so often even down. I’m pretty sure your actual element was Irish Grit, an unweilding combination of hard work, big love and a bit of luck.

There are too many of us…family, friends, students and fellow teachers that are saying goodbye to you and not a single one of us will be ready to let you go tomorrow. The only peace I can find in this chapter is the belief that your earthly heart was simply not meant to be boundaried any longer and your bridge building work could serve more if you were up on a higher ground.