On Memorial Day Weekend and the Adjustment to Department Staffing
It is a challenging weekend for me in many ways. Mostly it is a challenge because I am without my father on this weekend for the first time in my life. Memorial Day weekend has been a very valuable part of my life particularly over the past eleven years.
Annually on the Saturday before Memorial Day, he and I travel to decorate cemetery plots of those people in his life were extremely influential: His first wife, his mother (my grandmother), his grand parents (my great grandparents), and his older brother. Lodi, Creston, Wooster, and Moreland.
I would usually arrive somewhere around 9:00 a.m. and the two of us would head east into the sun. Conversations of all types would take place on the way to and through various cemeteries. I would treat to lunch and supper.... and usually pay for gas.
It was something I had come to hold very near and dear to my heart.... Now.... it is gone because he is gone.
Last night... I made the trip..... It didn't seem "right" in so many ways. Wrong day, wrong company, and most importantly... wrong timing....
I didn't care for the pressure that lack of time created. I did love that I was able to navigate the Wooster by=pass effortlessly. But.... and it is a big but.... It was simply wrong on about a 1,000 different levels.
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This past week was traumatizing for one of my colleagues. He is not coming back to teach in his current capacity due to reduction in force. I don't understand apparently the depth of my employer's financial distress. To step away from a fourteen year quality veteran teacher is quite the statement.
I have worked diligently to find him leads for new employment. Some nibbles are coming through....
I feel responsible to him and for him on three specific levels... #1 - I was part of the two man committee that hired him. #2 - He is a member of our Social Studies team, of which I chair, and #3- He has a wife and two little children to provide for. I, on the other had have 31 years of experience, no children to provide for, and I do not have a mortgage. It should be me that is leaving. My immediate supervisors simply will not allow that to happen. Bottom line? I am struggling with this turn of events.
Annually on the Saturday before Memorial Day, he and I travel to decorate cemetery plots of those people in his life were extremely influential: His first wife, his mother (my grandmother), his grand parents (my great grandparents), and his older brother. Lodi, Creston, Wooster, and Moreland.
I would usually arrive somewhere around 9:00 a.m. and the two of us would head east into the sun. Conversations of all types would take place on the way to and through various cemeteries. I would treat to lunch and supper.... and usually pay for gas.
It was something I had come to hold very near and dear to my heart.... Now.... it is gone because he is gone.
Last night... I made the trip..... It didn't seem "right" in so many ways. Wrong day, wrong company, and most importantly... wrong timing....
I didn't care for the pressure that lack of time created. I did love that I was able to navigate the Wooster by=pass effortlessly. But.... and it is a big but.... It was simply wrong on about a 1,000 different levels.
------------------------------------------------
This past week was traumatizing for one of my colleagues. He is not coming back to teach in his current capacity due to reduction in force. I don't understand apparently the depth of my employer's financial distress. To step away from a fourteen year quality veteran teacher is quite the statement.
I have worked diligently to find him leads for new employment. Some nibbles are coming through....
I feel responsible to him and for him on three specific levels... #1 - I was part of the two man committee that hired him. #2 - He is a member of our Social Studies team, of which I chair, and #3- He has a wife and two little children to provide for. I, on the other had have 31 years of experience, no children to provide for, and I do not have a mortgage. It should be me that is leaving. My immediate supervisors simply will not allow that to happen. Bottom line? I am struggling with this turn of events.
posted by cpc at 12:08 PM
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