Life is so unpredictable. In a time when I lost what I thought was the love of my life, I found so many friends and they pointed me to my true love.

It was my first teaching gig. I was hired by a small school district in a town 30 minutes drive from mine. I was married, had a kindergarten daughter and was pregnant. The guy who hired me didn’t notice the baby bump. I quickly found that I loved my students and teaching. But not only that, I found a friend next door to my biology classroom. Deryl was a quiet, kind, non-judgmental soul. He introduced me to his wife, Linda who was not so quiet but every bit as kind, and they took me under their wing after my daughter was born and my husband left me. I particularly remember two of their acts of kindness.

When my six year old daughter was sick and I had run out of sick days to stay home with her, Deryl offered to let her stay on the couch in his office connected to our classrooms. He was so thoughtful and would stick his head in and check on her periodically during the day. About a year later, he and Linda invited me to dinner as they so often did but this time they had someone for me to meet. He is now the love of my life and we have been married for 37 years.

Through the grapevine I heard that Deryl had pancreatic cancer and passed last Saturday. I lost track of Deryl and Linda except through that grapevine but I will always remember how their kindness changed my life.