Graduation is in a week. In two weeks from right now, I will be on summer break. But yesterday, I closed a chapter on my life.

Five years ago, I took on the newspaper class. Four years ago, I started teaching English 9 honors. And as the semesters closed, I recruited hard from those students. I saw their excellence. I saw dedication. I saw incredible talent and ability. And I was surrounded by students who were just wonderful people. And given I had just received my brother’s diagnosis, I needed to surround myself with those qualities.

Yesterday, those former ninth graders were in my newspaper classroom for the last time. They sang Justin Bieber’s “Baby, Baby, Baby (oohhhh)” song. They sang Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” And I held myself as tightly as possible as I watched a group of young women bouncing in the front of my classroom, clutching karaoke microphones and just belting out songs with undiluted joy.

At 9:20, I took over the class. A week earlier, these students had gifted me with a video saying good-bye. They were planning on waiting a week. They couldn’t. And I sobbed into my pink bandana that, thank God, I had with me. And as I clutched that pink bandana, I finally found the perfect gift to give my seniors.

Shortly after 9/11, I found the book 102 Minutes, an incredible piece chronicling the attacks on the World Trade Centers. The writers narrated the lives and deaths of over 300 people through interviews either with the survivors or their family members. For the better part of 14 years, I taught the hell out of that book and did my best to impart a level of compassion and empathy into my students, especially as their memories of 9/11 diminshed. And then evaporated because they hadn’t been born yet.

In the book, the writers discuss a man with a red bandana who was in the South Tower. In the book, he is nameless. I honestly wondered if he was an angel. He just kept showing up in different places. And he kept saving people’s lives.

Then, years later when I went to New York City for the first time, I learned his name. Welles Crowther. The man with the red bandana. The man who literally carried at least one woman down flights of stairs only to turn around, go back up, and continue leading more people to safety. He perished when the tower collapsed on top of him. He selflessly gave his life so others could live.

I don’t have a lot of “heroes.” I don’t like heroes because they are people thrust onto a styrofoam pedestal. But I have a few. And Welles Crowther is one of them.

I purchased 18 red bandanas. And yesterday, I explained to my seniors that I didn’t want to give them a gift that would eventually become a dust collector. I needed to give them something that they could carry and would help them.

The bandana can wipe away their sweat. Like me, the bandana can drink their tears. They can clutch their bandanas during moments of grief or pain. And in moments of elation when they summit a mountain (done that too). Most of all, I wanted them to realize how much they saved me. Over the years, as Peter’s illness progressed and he eroded, the newspaper class was my anchor. As I experienced the pain of a child’s estrangement, the newspaper class was my distant normalcy. As my family imploded and then reassembled and I tried so hard just to be normal, the newspaper class was normal. Becuase it was a routine. Find a story. Assign the story. Go out on interviews. Write. Edit. Write. Edit…and over and over again until the story comes to me and I can pull myself out of whatever pain I’m hiding long enough to read the words and offer corrections and praise the writer on an article well done.

The students knew about Peter. They knew nothing else because they didn’t need to. I had a therapist, and the students were not it.

Yesterday was closing. Closing the chapter of my life with newspaper. Closing the chapter of pain. I still grieve for Peter. And I still grieve for the pain of those years. But I also take time to release the pain. To open my fingers and let the pain slip away like moths seeking the stars. Pain is part of life. It makes me grow, makes me reflect. Makes me into a better person.

I know that closing this chapter is not closing my experiences with pain. Life will continue to unfurl and unravel. I will experience more. And I will endure it. And then I will stand at the next chapter closing and look over my shoulder and see the moths climbing the tender stalks of new grass growing in my footsteps. And then I’ll adjust the straps of my backpack, turn around, and push forward.