Eulogy from the service, Part Two:
She loved her students, and her whole school community. Her heart and soul were stamped into Hamilton Elementary, and Hamilton Elementary was stamped onto her soul. A former student of hers reached out to me recently to tell me a lovely story about how Sharon would have her kids create artwork that she would put onto dresses, and then wear those dresses to school, and how tickled the kids were to see their artwork on her – and that’s love. That’s dedication. That same person shared how Sharon was always there to calm a distraught student, to comfort them. That’s care.
And for me, I grew up in her classroom. I ran the halls of Hamilton long before I was a student there, and knew every teacher I ever had there years before I was in their class, but my homebase was my grandmother’s classroom. I would steal books from her classroom, and family lore says that’s how I taught myself to read. And I would spend time with her pet frog, Sticky Fingers, gifted by some enterprising student over the years because my grandmother’s classroom theme was “frogs” for longer than I’ve been alive. To this day, I don’t even know if she really liked frogs, or just leaned into the theme.
I do know she really did love her students. She enjoyed seeing them around the community, especially when she worked at Kmart and then Kohl’s part-time in Leesburg, and would enjoy seeing her old students and their families over the years. And she loved teaching. It was a running joke in my house growing up that she would retire only when the walls of the school fell down around her. And lo and behold, they did just that – the year she retired, the school commenced major construction to add a gym, and walls indeed came down.
I grew up in a multi-generational household, with my mom and my grandmother along with my siblings. And I am incredibly grateful for that. I gravitated to my grandmother and formed a close bond with her early. In fact, I’m the reason us grandkids called her Meema – perks of being the first grandkid, I guess. I called both my mom and my grandmother “Mommy” interchangeably, and that was confusing, so – in an effort to simplify things – my grandmother came up with “Meema,” flipping the syllables for toddler convenience. I have fond memories of falling asleep in my grandmother’s lap, often, it must be said, amidst a haze of cigarette smoke, while she embroidered, knitted, or, let’s be real, graded papers over my head in her easy chair. A teacher’s work is never done.
My grandmother was often my person when my mom was busy – busy with the younger kids, or with work, or with general life stuff. And that bond ran deep. When I moved to Texas for grad school, she came along for the great moving trip down to Houston, and made sure to introduce me to her maid-of-honor BFF Karen while we were down there. She also got ‘picked up’ by a cowboy in Nashville on that trip, but that’s a story for another time.
And when I moved back to Virginia, ostensibly for my nephew, I’d be lying if I didn’t say a big part of why I stayed has been her. Especially after my mom died, caring for her was such an important part of my life. I had already been tag-teaming with my mom, helping with doctors’ appointments, visiting my grandmother when she moved to assisted living, joining weekly family dinners. But when mom died, Sharon became my world in a lot of ways.
I propped her up, and she propped me up. She reminded me that I wasn’t alone, that someone not only still loved me, but still needed me. And that kept me afloat, kept me grounded, reminded me who I was when everything felt so disorienting. As her mind clouded, it felt like my purpose sharpened, and I will be forever grateful to her for being herself, for being there in whatever capacity she could be, even as she became increasingly frail and confused. As I told her frequently, she cared for me as a child and I was honored to care for her in her twilight years.
