Today I am humming to Green Day’s Blvd of Broken Dreams. Because that’s the story in my life
Personal
One Year Later: Missing Kristin
This was derived from a Facebook status post, and written to honor the memory of a teacher from the days I attended the GLEC program in Massachusetts. In August of last year, this teacher I knew from the sister program I attended, had passed away. She was south of 35 years old, if I did my math right by two months. I say this with the utmost sadness recalling the emotions and celebrating her life. This one has only but positive memories because that was the individual she was. Rare.
A year ago I had to go through a death of Kristin Mulvey, people in my remaining GLEC/CREST circles would relate to. She died of a really nasty high stage ovarian cancer, which is the worst bitch on the planet if you asked me. 
🙂 I am going to just be upfront and say she was my last teacher crush, and for all the right reasons. She never had any skeletons in her closet (which is the vulernabiltiies for people to “fall for” even with a woman-crush/professional-crush situations), she was the real deal – what you saw was what you got. She never came off like princess, or a bitch, rude or disrespectful. (This occurs a lot in the SPED circles sadly.) The people that I know that knew her had nothing bad to say about her at all not because they wanted to cover her, it was real. Because SHE WAS the real deal. She was the cool-chick, the laid back cool woman type that wouldn’t let the smallest things of a person bother her or take it out against a student (anyone whose a student in SPED in one walk of life could relate to.)
She was so dedicated to her work with severely disabled students. She did stuff that wasn’t in her pay grade because she wanted to. She never used her power to pivot to another career. Sure she had changed employers since, but I have seen too many people just wanting to make a name for THEMSELVES in the actions of other disabled students.
She never treated ANY of her students differently. Including the students from the other programs (that’s-a-me) and it’s rare to find people who valued people as people. I can’t speak too much of her profession since it was over a decade ago, but the dedication was one of the many qualities that would make me be attracted to her, or have as a 1on1 para mind you since it’s so hard to find good help. She was the rare breed. I’m grateful that always spoke highly of me years after I left in 2008, a source had confirmed that to me.
She was also the 4th close death (people I knew prior to 21) in like 8 months, and the first of series that were close which ranged in emotions. I was aware of her illness in the fall 16; it wasn’t a question of if, only when, and even if you think on the latter, the emotions of the former could hit.
When I received the email of her passing my after was just somber, just sad. That’s all I can describe. I knew some of her family in various circles over those same years I knew her, which kinda made the bond between those individuals in different ways.
All I can say I miss her so dearly and that she was a very rare product of the special education world, and sadly she can’t be replaced and people like her are born with it. If a Kristin was in my life in school, I may had become a different person earlier on than later in my life because she was always pleasant. I suspect that is more of a temperament than anything else.
Loosing someone like Kristin has made me rethink on how I should value and find quality help. I wished it didn’t happen this way. The worst sensation for me is to loose someone that you can’t say anything critical about, because someone like Kristin was so damn awesome. I can only speak for myself, I miss you!
🙁