The Educator

The bent man huddled at the podium, shuffling his notes. Around his shabby form the room was white and humming with subdued illumination. On the altar stood a picture of his wife, framed in silver, smiling inappropriately. Just behind, an alabaster jar contained her dust. We shifted, waiting.

The widower cleared his throat. "For those of you who knew her in her later years," he began, and the apology followed. Alzheimers. Everyone remembered. But if we only knew her in those unfortunate times, he continued, then we had not known his wife at all. Her intellect, he promised us, had once been her great gift to the world. She had been an educator, a great educator. Across from him a table laden with diplomas and certificates stood stiffly, several square feet of recognition - unrecognized for what it signified. Afterward I tried to read the calligraphic testaments to her academic brilliance, but found myself suddenly illiterate. The tears that reduced me to preschool status reminded me of the woman I had known. Her ashen face, her ashen mind, her ashen words repeated senselessly, questions on a carousel, asking me about my education, my education, my education. I recalled how I had answered each successive time with greater understanding. My wisdom grew in simplicity. She taught me, this great educator, that information, content, meant little; interaction was everything, the process of give and take, over and over, a cycle of infinity.

I left the funeral repeating to myself in mindful mindlessness: I knew you. I knew you.