Helen

How do you even begin to express how it feels to lose a friend/co-worker like Helen Kauffman – someone you have shared office space with for eight years, eight hours a day, five days a week, 11 months out of the year.

Someone who laughed and kept you laughing all throughout the day, whose rich laughter could be heard all the way down the hall.

Someone who found stress relief in the houseplant section at Fred Meyer. Sometimes just browsing was enough, but purchasing a new plant was always sure to lift her spirits. In fact, I'm not sure she could even stop by Fred Meyer without checking out the plant department. There was always room for one more plant on her desk.

Someone who unconditionally loved those who were especially unlovable, people who I often would have preferred to ignore so they would go away.

Someone who deeply felt the hurts of others and would greatly inconvenience herself to do anything she could to help.

Someone who loved and cared for her own children and grandchildren above all else – but had plenty of love left over to spoil my own children and any child in the vicinity.

Someone who called everyone “Honey” and “Sweetheart”, even her bosses!

Someone who thrived on having the staff crowd around her desk after school, asking her to order this and take care of that. Someone who loved to nurture them and made them feel like part of the family.

Someone who was crazy about babies and animals, and gushed extravagantly with no inhibitions over both.

Someone who could drive me crazy sometimes when there was pressing work to do in the office, but she was busy counseling a child or deep in conversation with a staff or family member....or repotting a plant in the middle of the office, getting dirt everywhere. Sometimes she would realize it and apologize for "slacking". On a good day, I might reply something like, "It's OK, Mary, you've got Martha here to take care of it!" We would laugh about it together. I really want to be more like Mary.

Someone who, like me, was often stubborn and opinionated, but always forgave and forgot when I messed up.

Someone who made going to work so interesting and fun, because you just never knew what kind of crazy thing she might do or say.

Someone who firmly believed that chubby people should accept themselves just the way they are. Someone who believed that I was perhaps getting too thin. (I told you she could be crazy, didn't I?! But see why I love her so much!)

Someone who will never come back and be my amazing partner, “the nice one”, “the one who looks like a grandma”.

Someone who stubbornly refused to let cancer steal her joy, who tenaciously clung to her belief that God could heal, who fought with everything she had to live her normal life of service to others in spite of the pain and fatigue that became her constant companions. Someone whose courage and persistance was an inspiration and source of amazement to those around her.

Someone who was supposed to work this year to welcome her grandson to 6th grade and then retire, with a huge crazy hilarious party at the end of the year, an occasion for which I had been filing away pictures and stories.

Someone who I miss terribly. Someone who leaves a huge hole in our school and in my life.

Someone who was an outstanding example of these words from Philippians 2. "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. "

That was Helen Kauffman.