My Secret Public Journal: August 2023

Thursday, August 17, 2023

Every time I go to North Middle School I'm hit with a wave of nostalgia. I taught my first two years in the old North building and my third year at the old South building with the North staff; my third year was the year of the great middle school shuffle when North went to South, South went to East, and Memorial went to South. It was a whole thing. Needless to say, my formative years as a young teacher were spent in Room 205 just off the 6th Grade Hall. Today, I stopped by North and found myself in a nearly empty building. Taking advantage of the situation, I walked up to the old hallway and down to my old room. The windows are now cinderblocks, the room has been divided to make more room for other classrooms, and my first classroom is, for all intents and purposes, a closet. I could be saddened by this turn of events, but I am not. I'm not, because the nature of life is change. The North of my memories doesn't exist anymore. The building has been remodeled, many of my friends no longer work there (some still do), and I am also no longer the young man who cut his teeth teaching on the wheel. As I stood there, remembering so many people and events, I recalled a line from a poem I have always loved: "I have only slipped away to the next room."

Death Is Nothing At All

by Henry Scott Holland

Death is nothing at all.

I have only slipped away to the next room.

I am I and you are you.

Whatever we were to each other,

That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.

Speak to me in the easy way

which you always used.

Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.