It’s amazing the things we remember over the years. What’s even more interesting is why certain events or people stay with us, and others don’t. Some might say trauma plays a big role in it; others might say it’s the positive, pleasant memories that stick. There’s even a quote from Flavia Weeden that says, “Some people come into our lives and quickly go; some stay awhile, leaving footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.”
Teachers are supposed to inspire and make lasting impressions on students, or so I thought. Well, Ariella came into my life and, with her quiet, terrifying clarity, recalibrated my understanding of what it means to leave a mark. She exists in my memory not as an image, but as a visceral reaction. That year, several students enrolled in my Advanced Writing class were delightful, eager to learn, and ready to write and write some more. I was excited and pleased by their progress and by the regular feedback that they were enjoying the assignments and the class tremendously.
One such assignment was an essay on which profession you would pursue and why. After sharing a detailed rubric and holding extensive discussions on original ideas, accurate research, effective organization, unique voice, memorable word choice, expressive sentence fluency, and correct conventions, I sent my students on their way. A few had questions, but I encouraged them to look deep within and find their inspiration. “Think outside the box,” I told them. “Your imagination is the limit.” I should have known, or at least, I should have been better prepared.
As you can imagine, the essays landed on doctors, professors, chefs, law enforcement officers, writers, and so much more. Several were quite intriguing, and most were really interesting. When I assigned that essay, I was looking for ambition. I wanted to read about the noble pursuit of justice, the healing hands of medicine, or the soaring imagination of the future novelist. I wanted the polished, hopeful writing of teenagers who saw adulthood as a sprawling, sun-drenched landscape or an uncertain horizon.
With Ariella, what I got was a masterclass in the macabre. I remember the eerie sensation I felt in my bones as I perused the paragraphs of her essay. The hook wasn’t just a hook; it was a snare. She wrote about the “silent stillness” of a body that had ceased to be a home for a soul. She wrote with a clinical tenderness that felt, quite frankly, like a violation of the natural order.
As I read, the room seemed to shrink. She described the viscosity of fluids, the meticulous geometry of restorative work, the specific, cold artistry required to return a semblance of peace to a face that had lost its light. She wasn’t writing about death; she was writing about the preservation of humanity in the face of the final indignity. She spoke of this craft not as a chore, but as a final, intimate act of care.
My hands were shaking. I remember looking up at the clock, watching the second hand tick, desperate for a distraction. Every rubric criterion I had spent weeks teaching was carefully followed. The three E’s of elaboration, along with a few figurative language techniques, were wielded with the precision of a scalpel. She made the grotesque beautiful, and that was exactly why I couldn’t stop reading, and exactly why I wanted to scream.
How does a young girl, full of life, look at the abyss and decide she wants to be the one who tidies it up?
I gave her an A plus. I had to. It was the best, most haunting piece of writing I had ever graded. I remember handing it back to her. She looked at the grade, then up at me, her eyes clear and untroubled. She didn’t offer a dramatic explanation; she just gave me a faint, knowing smile, the look of someone who already stood on the other side of a door I hadn’t yet dared to open.
I still wonder about her. I imagine her now, in some quiet, antiseptic room, a steady hand, a calm heart, doing the work that most of us find unthinkable. She taught me that inspiration doesn’t always look like a heroic climb; sometimes, it’s the quiet, steady decision to walk into the dark so that others might be comforted by the light.
She left her footprints on my heart, though the path she took is one I still, twenty years later, cannot quite understand. And I suppose that is why she stays. You never forget the people who force you to realize that even in the most shadowed corners of existence, someone is standing there, waiting to be of service, even as an embalmer.
© 2026 Addie DeRose
