A Student's Perspective

This post, for Bill and for me, is a tear-jerker.

No, wait! Nothing bad has happened! Rather, it's a SWEET kind of tear-jerker.

One day this week, we unexpectedly received the following letter from Kristen, one of Bill's students of last semester at App State. We were so terrifically moved, and its meaningfulness was so intense for us, given the context of Bill's illness and struggles to teach last semester, and the question of his future ability to teach, that we....well....we were deeply moved, to say the least...

I wrote back to this student (she mailed her message to me, not to Bill), and after trying to put into words for her how much this had meant to us just now, I also asked her for permission to reprint her letter and name, and she granted it.

In order to make sure that YOU, the blog reader, know what Kristen's letter meant to us, AND in order to let Kristen's letter be the last part of this blog entry, as its grand finale, I will first post, below, part of my response to Kristen. Finally, you will see Kristen's letter in full.

Here is my response to her:

Kristen:

You can't possibly imagine how much this meant to me and to him to have a letter like this at this exact time in his life. Your beautiful message reflects to him something he has spent his life working for, even praying for--to have really made heart-to-heart contact with a student--because, believe me, he loves his students, and his sharing of his beloved literature with them, as much as he loves his own family, and he cares SO much about really reaching you. And here, he gets a letter like this, proving that he has, at least with you, achieved his life's wish. It is just beyond the pale, that you took the time to let us know this, and to share the beauty and sweetness of your heart with me, and with him.

And here, at last, is the letter Kristen sent to us, to which the above note from me was a reply:

Dear Beth,
I’ve been meaning to email you for some time now, but I didn’t really know what I was going to say once I did. I had professor Drennan’s English class this past spring, and on one of the days he notified us about canceling class, I think he used your email account (which you hopefully still use or I'm out of luck with this message) to send the email. And later on, for whatever reason, I was randomly Googling names as I am wont to do and upon entering yours I surreptitiously came across your blog. It was such a random occurrence that I guess I was meant to find it, and I’m really glad I did. It’s not only wonderfully well written and sad and funny rolled into one, but it gave me a glimpse into the life of my professor that we as students could only guess at. It was really difficult to read much of the time, knowing how sick he was and that he was there in front of me teaching every day through it all. And I would go back to my dorm or get online between classes and get the latest updates. I remember in your post from the last day of classes, you said that he’d said he didn't figure we knew the full extent of what he was going through, and I agree. What we saw in class never equaled what I was reading in the posts, his love for the subject keeping him smiling throughout each period, looking very tired at times but cheerful and passionate about teaching us. He’s really my hero at this point. I was thrilled to read that it’s all over now. Keep writing! You have a wonderful, strong husband and I feel honored to have taken his class.

Kristen Fox