People didn’t know the darkness that went on in her mind everyday. Even those closest to her would be surprised. Like: She’d like to take that stupid plaque they gave her when she got laid off, nail it to a big tree, and take some target practice on it. She figured a 21-Gun-Salute would be appropriate since she felt like dying ever since the day she got her pink slip. (insert sound effect)
When the principal came waving that pink slip at her in the middle of the quad at the end of the day in front of everybody calling her name out in a happy sing-song tone, “Ms Lu, I’ve got something for you!” (She should have just handed her a big knife and said, “e tu, Brutus?”)
“Why don’t you just get over it?” an unhelpful friend suggests.
“I’ll NEVER get over it!” she thinks defiantly. Leaving Montgomery was the biggest heartbreak of her life. Fifteen years seemed like a lifetime. She was in her prime. She did not want to go. She cried everyday for years.
In the end they couldn’t know how truly sad she was and how much she still thought about them even after all these years. Her “babies” were between the ages of 20 and 35 now. Adults exploring careers, families, heart breaks, and successes on their own. “It is their world now,” she says to calm herself. She hopes they will remember some of what she tried to teach them. “Bless them all,” she thinks every night. “Bless them all. And carry the torch. It’s your turn.”
