Tuesday, Apr. 08, 2003
June Glover, 1947-2003; David Bloom, 1964-2003, posted at 8:13 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Entry 2 of the day:Last week, my former English teacher, Ms. June Glover, passed away from breast cancer. I had her in the 8th grade, and most remember her as a strict woman who delighted in the story "Rikki Tikki Tavi." Somehow, the memory that keeps resurfacing of her class includes this silly little huzzah she did when the intercom broke down. Mr. Watson, who died in 1994, came into the room, pointed at the intercom, and said something like, "You disappointed, Mrs. Glover?" and she broke her stern demeanor to lift her arm into the air and laugh. As any effective middle school teacher was, she was strict and tough, and I'll think of her whenever a student is disruptingly rolling his pencil on his desk.
I've also been rocked a bit recently with the death of David Bloom. I have not been drawn to the television like others have to view the war, but I still knew who he was. But, intermixed with the feelings that I usually get when a celebrity dies - especially a young, vibrant one with seemingly more than half his life in front of him - is what he died of: a pulmonary embolism. A blood clot that formed in the legs and travelled to his heart, with no symptoms and no warnings.
This is the same thing that felled Ann Bolger, a former supervisor of mine whose sudden and unexpected death rocked me to the core. It's unbelievable that it's been two and a half years since it occurred, but Bloom's death reminded me of some of the things that Ann's death taught me: to focus on the present - not the past, and not the future. As her father said, it's all fine and good to focus on the other two, but one never knows when the present will be the end.
"Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow." - Maria Mitchell
I don't do this enough. Not nearly enough.