Oh, Mr. Barnes, I wish you were still alive. I wish I could find you like I did, one more time, volunteering at the Nelson, like the last time I found you, and tell you that you were the most important teacher I ever had. I wish I could tell you that your personality was every bit as important as the content of your class. I wish I could tell you...so much. How I had gone on to college to major in bioengineering. How I would say to myself "when I grow up, I want to be Mr. Barnes." How science seemed such an impossibly difficult topic until you opened it up for me.
Is electrophoresis a normal thing to have had high school students do in the 90's? Because we did it. We extracted DNA. And we injected chicks with chorionic gonadotropin. Then we euthanized them and inspected their testicles. And we thought. Oh, how we thought. Which was this strange, wonderful thing to be doing. I spent my days, that one glorious 5 months of my whole life, thinking.
It is no suprise to me that ten years after that class, with my artist/wife in hand, I found you volunteering at The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. Of course the incredible Mr. Barnes would retire from a career teaching science to volunteer at an art museum.
Oh, Mr. Barnes, how I wept when I read your obituary. I openly wept and hid from my wife while I did it. Because how do you explain it to someone who didn't know you? How do you explain that a piece of the world has been ripped away...a piece that was good?
I weep now as I write this. Not as much because of your death, but because I am too late to say it to your face. If there is one regret in my life...maybe in the life of all people...it is that we are mortal and so is everyone else, and when we realize the things we should tell people it often is just too late.
Sayeth the wise:
Loretta Wood, a friend and colleague said about his ability to inspire and motivate, “Our older son, Garrett, was a “Barnes grad,” and often returned from KU for those famous Thanksgiving dinners at Olathe South, where the alumni line was 40 deep. Our younger son, Cullen, deployed with his Marine Intel unit, waited hours in line at Camp Fallujah, Iraq, to call “the old man” and wish him a happy birthday. Such is his legacy…”Cullen was in my class. Mr. Barnes...why did you die? The mortality of life never felt so unfair to me. I miss you. I work hard because of people like you.
Every time I think about Mr. Barnes I start crying. I pray there is an afterlife...not for myself, but because I want to believe Mr. Barnes is enjoying it.
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