The People That Shape You

When I was in my twenties and thirties, I was an English teacher at a high school in Staffordshire in England. Previous to this, I had been performing administrative posts and wondering what the hell was I going to do? I knew that I was underperforming but I've never been a particularly driven person or rather, to qualify that statement, not by money or status.

Eventually, I decided to do a PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education) at Keele University and my final placement was at the school where I eventually taught "for real". Another teacher left while I was training and they offered me her job. I took it eagerly as I could see that I'd be working with a good bunch of people in a supportive school environment.

I always swore I'd never be a teacher. It was the assumption that everybody makes when you complete an English degree. I'd toyed with editing or proofreading and had had a couple of interviews but no success.

Teaching eventually spoke to me. I think initially the thought of standing up in front of a class full of kids was too daunting but as my experience and my confidence grew with age and life-living, I realised that this was something I might actually be good at.

It was daunting. The first time I had to teach a class on my own was scary and intimidating and demanding. But it soon became the norm and you find a flow and a feel for your classes, for the individuals who make them. I settled into life as an English teacher.

Yesterday, I revisited that life. Not wholly. I didn't re-enter the classroom. I haven't been there in an official capacity since 2012, but I did step back in time almost and into those shoes with those past colleagues for a short period of time. It was strange and has shaken me.

Let me explain.

Liz.

She was the reason.

*

I headed off, after the morning school run and a quick cup of tea to journey north up to Staffordshire. 1pm. That was the time that the English Department as I knew it would reconvene although we were not meeting at a school this time. Nor a pub as had been known. Not at first. Nor Liz's house or back garden in the balm of summer waning, to refresh our camaraderie after weeks away being something other than a teacher and reconnecting again before the new school year started.

We were meeting at the crematorium.

I took my time driving. I was nervous. Silly really because I had bonded with these people over many years but it was to be a day of high emotions and I didn't know how I would handle it. It felt weird to be on my own, in the car, heading up the motorway. I'm almost never on my own now, not for long periods of time. It feels a little loose, like I've shrugged off a disguise I've been wearing. I sort of like it and I sort of don't. It makes me feel vulnerable and exposed but also, if I'm honest, a little freer. It's just me, Rachel, meeting old friends with no interruptions, no demands, no constraints. But I feel the expectation of the meeting-up nonetheless and it has a weight.

My journey is purposeful today. I decide to indulge in a little nostalgia. I come off the motorway early and I drive the route that I took so many times to school when I lived in Wolverhampton. There is a diversion which spoils it a little but it's pretty much as it was, through the lanes, across roundabouts, into villages, out again. I stop at a garden centre I used to visit sometimes when I finished the school day, where I'd search for plants in the bargain section to nurture from browning curls back to green lushness.

I'm just there for a toilet break today and to eat the lunch I've packed and, if I'm honest, to collect myself. This is going to be hard. I'm calm though, I think. I've plenty of time to get to the crematorium. I have no idea where I'm going and I'm hoping it will be straightforward.

I brush myself free of crumbs and set the GPS. I'm surprised when it takes me through lanes again. When I'd visualised this journey, I'd imagined three lane islands and busy traffic intersections in Stafford but I'm travelling through lanes with high hedges and brick-built humpback bridges past frosted fields, canal locks and waterscapes dotted with floating birds. This is delightfully unexpected and a treat.

And then, I'm at the traffic lights, and the crematorium and burial ground are facing me, and I can see the cars lining up and the people sombrely walking. It's dark: black painted railings, grey gravestones, people in funereal blankness. I don't know this place. I don't know where to park. I don't know exactly what I'm going to find there. I know there'll be faces I know but how will they receive me?

*

If I thought about it, it's probably the same for them. They haven't seen me for years. I'm a different quantity now: no longer a part of the team and yet, the strings that tie are still there loosely joining us. They'll be tighter today but will slacken off again once I say goodbye to make the long journey home. That's just how it is, how it always is, how it will always be. We're colliding like marbles, only to veer off again in different spaces.

I had expected to be one of the first there but there are crowds. I manage to nose my car through the people milling around and find a space very close to the building where the service will be held. I park up, take a deep breath and get out.

Immediately, I recognise faces: some of them just people I saw at the photocopier; others more senior staff members who I may have had the odd interaction with; others more familiar to me.

And then the full enormity of my being here at this time with these people hits me anew. Liz is dead. The reason that I am seeing all of these people from what feels like a past life is because Liz is dead. And with the greetings and the warm hugs come the tears.

*

Liz was my Head of Department. She was an amazing woman, not in a change-the-world-audaciously kind of way but in the solid, dependable, warm, funny way which doesn't get remarked upon because it's so ordinary and unshowy and yet, it is her and people like her who nurture and strengthen the world around us. She took what was raw, in its basic material form and she moulded it, crafted it, cajoled it into being something better. She would have been instrumental in shaping the lives of many to some lesser or greater degree. She was certainly a shaper of mine and her influence will be felt by me beyond the years that she's been known to me.

She died young. 61. Cancer. Diagnosed in August, dead before Christmas. She had retired from teaching and was enjoying life with a house in the Mediterranean, her kids off starting their own adult lives, her and her husband left, together pursuing life in whatever form it now took.

Her death, as so many others have in 2024, shocked me, like a punch to the gut, doubling me over.

I hadn't seen her in years. 2014, maybe, when I called into school on my way to Canada from Australia? Maybe a little later? I'm not sure. I feel guilt about this.

Lives drift like jetsam, different currents taking you all in different directions, despite you all being in the same sea. And soon, that distance becomes the horizon and it's difficult to find your way back to that initial point where you were all just bobbing along together. In fact, it becomes unreachable. You've got to hope that you wash up somewhere together for a brief sojourn before the tide takes you away and out again.

I never thought I wouldn't see her again. There had been talk of meeting up but people are busy and whilst you are known and loved, you become less, fading like an ancestor in a sepia photo. Others closer appear in technicolour and are more defined, more immediate. They are easier to grasp, to keep close and meetings slide into place without the complicated tanglements of social calendars and co-ordinating convenient places and times. It is difficult to corral everyone together with the demands of work, and family, and obligations.

That's just how it is a lot of the time.

But my memories of my time working with her are strong. Rock is a metaphor overused to describe steadfastness, loyalty, strength but she offered all of these things; and yet, she was soft, a listening ear, an understanding soul. You could lean and she'd let you. She would share and you felt glad to be chosen. She laughed loudly and made you laugh loudly too.

She was there at a time when I was in trouble; not falling apart but showing threads that could unravel. She recognised that and helped keep me together and I'll never forget that. She showed me the way, a guide through dark times of loss and uncertainty with her empathy and her knowing look. She was a colleague, my boss but also a friend, a big sister, maternal - all of these things.

When I left for Australia, she gave me a card. Written within was a personal message, lines that described how she saw me. It was a thank you, an appreciation for me, for the Rachel I was to her. It was an awakening for me because I knew her words were meant and that she offered me a mirror to see myself from outside, to direct me to what I brought and to recognise my worth. I treasure her words and think about them often. I will think about them more now.

I felt the pain of everyone that day, intensified by my own. It was nice to be back in the fold but it was painful too, knowing that the reason we had all been gathered was the loss of our leader. It was that that brought us together, which quashed my nervousness to nothing. The pleasure at being as one again was palpable, only marred by the loss that lassoed us here.

*

It is now two days later and Liz is still on my mind. But not in a maudlin way, although the tears still brim and threaten. Liz has once more guided me towards an awakening where I see myself again in a different light. Revisiting my past has made me see what I was, still am and what I am not, what I have moved past.

Liz loved life - the sun's warmth, great writing, poetry, deep thinking, discussion, friendship, departmental games, lunches, family, horses, white wine, the sea.

I can't admit to sharing all her passions - except for one thing, one big bold all-encompassing thing, a thing which from her was robbed and which I am not going to let slip my hold easily.

Life and a love for living it.

Let grief be a sunbeam, a searchlight, a rainbow and like Liz, let it guide me, as she did, to a fullness of self.