A Lesson Before Dying

By Continued

By the time their teacher's pain became obvious to the children, they had been amply prepared. Frederick had made certain of that. In his first week back on the job, he had explained his illness in simple terms they could understand. Cancer is like a big, bad germ that eats the cells in your body, he told them, but it's not contagious. You don't need to worry about getting sick from me, he explained. Most of all, Frederick had worked to ease their fears. He told them that he probably would die before the end of the school year, but he made it clear that this was a part of the life cycle.

For many of Frederick's students, the subject of death was a scary unknown, like the unexplained bump in the night. After all, few adults are eager to raise the subject of death with children. "I asked them, 'How many times have you sat down and talked to someone who is dying?' Very few raised their hands," Frederick says. "I told them that that was one experience they were going to have this year and that, as much as they wanted to, we would talk about it, bring it out into the open."

As the weeks passed, Frederick reported to his students about his trips to the doctor, updating them on his condition. He talked to them about the pain, and he lifted his shirt to show them the morphine patch that he used to control it. On a few occasions, the children saw the pain that morphine couldn't touch, the deep-down sadness of impending loss. Sometimes, as when he read to the children from Leo Buscaglia's life-cycle fable, The Fall of Freddie the Leaf , he wept openly. The children seemed to understand, responding to him with typical honesty and kindness. They were tentative at first, but gradually they began to ask questions: "How do you feel? Are you getting sicker? Are you going to be...