Requiem for a Queen

  I started off the day posting an old story I wrote on my blog, I told myself what a good blogger I was and left it at that. Then I read the news this morning, and now I’m reminded to put a little more effort into things. My first boss got fired, but who cares about jobs when it’s life someone no longer works for. A good woman is gone, a beautiful family is torn asunder and a stolen truck is to blame. There is little sense in such moments save the memories that remain.

  The first time I met JoEllen Abbot I was sneaking plastic ninja swords past her and her mother with her younger brother Jason. It might sound stupid until you realize we were sneaking roughly a hundred of them into his room. The reasons for such an expenditure are childlike and capricious, Jason’s mother was neither as she upended him for blowing a good chunk of money at the arcade in such an insane manner. Shortly afterwards JoEllen gave me my first really real job as a fry cook at Sonic.

  In that way JoEllen was my boss, in an entirely different way she served as a mentor/coach/somewhat big sister. JoEllen was a “theater kid” as was her brother which explains the three way link. After graduation she paid it forward by volunteering as the assistant coach of Pablo Evans forensics squad for a few years. She kept us safe on the road and out of trouble in distant lands, she told Pablo to let me do “radio speaking” because she figured it was an easy shot for me to go to state with the other kids my first year, she gave me a stupid little script called “Nicky the Bionic Bunny” that taught me to love playing pretend and she’s the one that told me I’d be good at making silly voices.

  She’s one of the ones that taught me how to really laugh. She’s one of the one’s who showed me there’s a world to take outside the world you’ve been given.

  All the things I listed are the things she did for others, she had a beautiful world of her own but chose to repeatedly step outside it for "us". Stepping outside is probably why she was where she was that day, she died a Teacher for the Saint Joseph School District, doing for yours until her very last day. She lived as an example to others reminding you to do the same.

 Today we have a world that is easier and easier to compartmentalize and segregate, she let a dirty little urchin hang out with her brother and decided to give of herself with no reward and make that little urchin a bit better for it. She gave her adult life to strangers and their children and her passing is momentous because there is now one less person in this world who is willing to give those things. I thank her for giving them to me, but I thank her a few days too late.

  History is written by the victors, JoEllen Abbot is/was/will always be a winner. This is her chapter from The Book of Greatest Women Who Ever Lived.