Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

The month of June will soon be upon us, the month of beginnings and endings, of flowers, marriages, graduations, and retirements. For me, June always brings the pleasures of a garden bursting with birds, berries and roses, the luxury of the extended summer nights, and, this year, the first anniversary of my retirement from teaching.

There was another lady from our school who retired last June. Mrs. Bernice Walker. She had been at Walsh Elementary far longer than I had, her forty years of service easily trumping my paltry twenty-six. Mrs. Walker had worked so long at Walsh that she was considered to be a dear friend and an institution by a large portion of the staff and a beloved grandmother by many of the students. She embodied the care and consistency that so many Walsh children are desperate for in a world that, for them, can be harsh and unpredictable.

Mrs. Walker died at the end of April, where she wanted to die, at home in her bed. When I went up to school a few days after her passing, its flag stood at half-mast, the office staff was taking a collection, and the teachers I spoke with sighed and shook their heads.

Mrs. Walker worked in the school cafeteria for most of the forty years she was at Walsh. Later, she worked as an aide in the main office. There is a special line at the Pearly Gates for anyone who has ever done a day in the Walsh School cafeteria. For having endured forty years there, I think St. Peter carries you over the threshold himself.

It is no exaggeration to think in biblical terms when contemplating the hours of breakfast and lunch waves that flow each day through the doors of the cafeteria at Walsh. For readers of classical literature, Dante’s Inferno might also come to mind.

You hear it before you see it.

You feel its vibration.

You smell it.

French Toast for breakfast is lovely; broccoli for lunch not so much.

When, as a teacher, you open the doors, either to deliver or to pick up a class, the wall of noise hits you. A thundering cacophony of sound. If you are there, as I often was, to search for a particular student, you take a deep breath before plunging into the rows of children whose conversations have all escalated into shouting matches in order to make themselves heard.

I don’t believe the children actually enjoy the noise they create, but the pent-up energy of a morning spent sitting quietly explodes out of them as soon as they cross into the room, an energy they seem helpless to suppress. Many of them struggle to stay in their seats. Others who might be neat and tidy in the classroom, strew empty plastic packages, straws, and cartons around them in the lunchroom as if they were tossing crumbs to a flock of starving birds.

All this the cafeteria staff are supposed to manage, feed, and clean up after. They are supposed to do this each day for children ages four to eleven.

The heroic nature of Mrs. Walker’s duties was duly noted by the pastor at her funeral service. He was himself a graduate of Walsh, a long-time friend of the family, and a young man who ruefully admitted before the assembled congregation that he’d been one of the ones who had run up and down the rows. He hailed Mrs. Walker’s epic endurance in a glorious crescendo of praise.

“Forty years in the Walsh School Cafeteria. Forty years. You KNOW she was walking with the Lord!”

There were smiles all round after he said this, heads bobbed in affirmation, and hands were lifted into the air. Because the church was full of folks who had themselves spent time in that cavernous room, its stained ceilings hovering high above them, its wall of windows looking out on the “green” side of the school to the hills on the other side of the valley. There were former students who’d sat for years on its uncomfortable benches, parents whose children sat there still. There were cafeteria staff who’d endured, and continued to endure, its many challenges, paraprofessionals, teachers, colleagues. Mrs. Walker’s church, Grace Baptist, lies only a few streets away from Walsh. Though there must have been people there who’d come from far away, the service felt local. It felt like a community mourning one of its own, singing her out, bringing her home.

Because of Mrs. Walker’s heartbreaking and unexpectedly early passing, and because we celebrated our retirement together surrounded by family, friends, and our colleagues from school, I feel a particular sadness at her leaving and an obligation to honor the time she wasn’t given and the opportunities that she will now miss. I feel an obligation to use my time, the time I do not deserve more than she did, joyously and wisely, to enjoy the people who are by me, or who walk with me though they live far away, to face what comes cheerfully, as she did, to live with a generous spirit, as she did, in the Walsh School cafeteria and office, in the community in which she lived, and in the hearts and minds of her family and friends.

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