I Would Die For You

[For my students; written after the Tree of Life Shooting in Pittsburgh, PA]

 

I would die for you.

I realize this as yet another gunman decides he gets to choose when a life should end, and which lives matter. I didn’t study for this, take a course, I don’t even wield a weapon. I am a teacher, for God’s sake. The promises I made were to never belittle you, always love you, always seek to discover what was behind your behavior rather than meting out unthinking discipline. I never once thought, seven years ago, that I would become an untrained soldier. And yet, I know without a doubt:

I would die for you.

I don’t know if it would do any good. Once I fall, maybe you would be next. But I will stand between you and evil, regardless of the cost. I will defend you with whatever is within my reach: textbooks, chairs, pencils: crude weapons, wielded with desperation and passion. These are my students, and to get to them, you must go through me. 

I would die for you.

I signed a contract, promised to follow the laws of this school and the laws of this state. I agreed to help you learn mathematics and science. I agreed to help you grow into young men and women. There was no written clause in that contract that required me to become a fighter. And yet, as I lift my pen for another year, I know that what I am really saying is:

I would die for you.

I will do my best to teach you the unstoppable power of love. I will do my best to teach you to overcome evil. I will do my best to keep you from fear, from futility, from insensitivity. I will guide you, give you what wisdom and hope I possess. I will spend the best parts of my days in showing you that you are worthy of love. And though I will never say it out loud, and though I pray to God it will never happen,

I would die for you.