Just Breathe

It's a staple sentence, this. Commonly found in yoga classes everywhere, my classroom when students are having a hard time, and in my head to myself on a regular basis. But yesterday it took on new meaning. I arrived to the hallowed halls of Rock-N-Roll High School to find a student back in class after an absence for a few days. I exclaimed to see him-- an unusually quiet young man, though a deep thinker and very responsible student. It became clear within two sentences that he had been absent because of a death in his family-- and then he began to weep.

There is this not-enforced rule that we are not to *touch* students-- you never really know how even casual and very innocent contact can impact a young person. However, once the waterworks began I put my arm around this kid's big ole heaving shoulders and held him while he cried. Between sobs the story came haltingly out that he had been with his grandma when she passed. He was describing her labored breathing, and how hard it was. "Just to see her like that--sob--and to see my grandfather loose---sob-- it. It was so hard for her to--sob-- breathe-- and--sob--when something like that happens you forget who you are--sob-- you just--and then she would try to breathe---sob-- and I don't know-- it was--sob--so hard..."

I wanted to say-- when you face mortality in the guise of a loved one you *have to see yourself differently. It alters not only your own life, not only how you see life, but also what you think is important in this life. Shit, what IS important in this life. Our expereince of this mortal coil is a finite expereince. Perhaps the pilosophers and spiritualists are right afterall, and there is more to our existance than just this human experience. But to SEE somebody giving up the ghost-- an oddly descriptive colloquiliasm-- you do forget who you are, a little. I think you forget because for just a second you cease to be the muscian, the student, the teenager-- and you are just a naked eyeball (as Ralph would say). These are the life-altering moments. They happen in the halls of high school and in the sick rooms of grandmas all over the place.