Missing School

This blog post is part of a year-long series ... Through this series of posts I plan to share our experiences in the last year of Hannah's life on earth, which spanned from February of 2008 to February of 2009. Many of you who read this blog followed our journey through the emails I wrote over the course of that year. My desire is to process through the events of that year from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really. But if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to join me.

Hannah always loved school.  From the very beginning, she excelled academically, and she took great pride in that.  Maybe a little too much pride!

Before she even started school, she knew where she wanted to go to college ... Ouachita Baptist University, the alma mater of her mom and dad, of course!  As a preschooler, she practiced writing her name until she could do it with perfection ... very proud of the fact that her name was a palindrome.  In elementary school, she was driven to accumulate more Accelerated Reader points than any other kid in her grade ... and she did.  When she was in junior high, she would start off the year telling me which academic awards she was going to receive in the assembly at the end of the year ... and then went on to do just that.  By the time she started senior high, she had a goal ... to be valedictorian of her class ... and she was heading that way with a 4.0 GPA through the second semester of her sophomore year.

So when she woke up the day after Valentine's Day 2008, once again with a severe headache and nausea, and asked to stay home from school for the second day in a row, I knew she wasn't playing around.  The girl didn't take missing school lightly.