He was my Sunday school teacher.

The men in my family are pretty closed about their emotions and pain. K boy, when he is hurt, usually crawls off into a corner and suffers quietly. It's when the house is quiet that I know to be concerned. And when he took a wrong turn over a waterfall recently and landed on rock in an inch of water after a five-foot drop, he merely said, "I'm okay, I"m okay." And when I insisted he MUST hurt, he said, "It's only pain."

So when one of his Sunday school teachers (his friends in the know say his favorite Sunday school teacher) died unexpectedly and suddenly last week, I was not surprised that he took it on the chin without wincing. This is his style. I have looked for subtle things over the past days to see if there was any indication of "hurt", but he remained stoic.

The memorial service for his teacher, Don, was today, originally scheduled at the same time as K's swim meet. So I left the choice up to K as to which one to go to. He thought all afternoon yesterday about it and decided he wanted to go to the swim meet. But God knows what K needs and arranges things. The swim meet went really quickly and was over by 2:30. The memorial, about five minutes away, got pushed back to 2:00; so I made the command decision that we would go. All K would say was, "I don't want to." I asked him why and he only repeated, "I just don't want to." Nevertheless, something inside me said we should go. So we went, and being late, stood out in the foyer listening and watching on the monitor to Brian's beautiful tribute to Don, and I picked up a "program" with Don's picture on the front. A card fell out, and as I didn't know Don well, I tucked it back into the stack of programs. But K said, "What was that, Mom?" So I told him it was a card to write a memory on. When I turned back to look through the window, K pulled the card out of the stack, took it to a table where there pens and started writing. When I glanced his way, he said, "Don't look. I don't want you to read this." But later, as I was helping him find the basket to put it in, I read it over his shoulder. It was unsigned and simply said, "He was my Sunday school teacher."

So, Cindy, when you find a card, written in an 8-year-old's cursive, in big letters because he did not have his glasses with him--please know that it came from the depths of the heart of a boy who did not know how to express the hurt in any other way.