Belinda and Lisa: A lesson in making the best of what we’ve got while we’ve got

G’day. Maybe you had a special teacher in your school days, maybe you have a few friends who are teachers and you know how hard good teachers work but I’d like to share the story of how one special teacher handled a crisis with one of my families. Her name is Lisa and the child’s name is Belinda. It’s a sad but wonderful story.

Belinda died a little while back of leukemia, so the last few years have not been easy for the family or her schooling with so many stints away and in hospital. Her friends are very sad of course and miss Belinda madly, so in class one day, as part of the grieving process, Lisa invited everyone to write down what they had learnt about life from Belinda.

They mentioned things like how not to be scared of death, how to laugh lots in the funny times, how to think positive in the bad times, how to have faith that God will take care, whatever happens and so on. Lisa used Nola the sad worrywoo to get the class exchanging thoughts about Belinda and sharing times when they were sad and what helped them through those times. There’s honestly nothing like peer sharing or what we professionally call social interactional learning to build kids’ creativity and empathy. Then Lisa asked for ideas on how they could respect Belinda’s memory, so for a while they left her seat empty and put a dried flower arrangement on her desk. After a few weeks the whole room arrangement was changed and the kids were happy to put Belinda’s posy on the wall with a little inscription that they composed together.

I was so touched by the teacher’s tactics in asking the kids what they had learnt from Belinda, I started asking parents in the clinic, even those with really difficult kids, what they had learnt about life from their own kids. Some said that they’d learnt to loosen up, to be more flexible, to regard interruptions as normal, to play more, laugh more, cuddle more and to treasure friends.

One parent suggested that if you can’t think of anything good they’ve taught you, remember they have taught us all how much sleep you can do without and how much patience you have. But it is strange how we can know some people for so long and not feel anything when they depart, but others, like Belinda, only touch our lives so briefly yet leave a life time legacy. Thank you Belinda, thank you Lisa.