Kathy’s death has really thrown me to the ground.
Chris‘s death was a surprise; Tracey‘s wasn’t.
Kathy’s was somewhere in-between: I’d known her cancer had recurred, but somehow didn’t think through what that meant. And because I didn’t think, I didn’t make the effort to contact her, to let her tell me how she was, to tell her how very much she meant to me.
With Chris and Tracey, things felt “even” somehow. Chris and I had been in at most indirect contact for years—with which we were apparently both okay—and C. and I did what we could to be with Tracey as she rounded that last curve.
They died too soon, but the loss is the loss of them, not also of unsaid words and unspent moments.
Not so with Kathy. I feel like I let her down, that there was something I could have given her that I withheld.
I don’t want to blow this out and make it sound as if ‘but for me, she died alone’: Her family was with her at the end, and I’d bet her many friends and colleagues were with her before then. No, Kathy would not have been alone.
And yet, I would have liked to have given back to her at least some of what she gave to me. She deserved that.
AbsurdBeats 
it sounds cliche but it’s not that you can pass on the gifts that she gave to you. Good teachers, as with parents, come to some understanding that if they do their jobs well than their efforts become somewhat invisible/unconscious in the abilities of their students (just as in learning to drive one stops having to think it thru as it becomes habit).
http://www.newappsblog.com/2014/04/sb-1391-and-the-criminalization-of-pregnancy-in-tennessee.html