Tribute to my Best and Most Inspiring Teacher

I've been in school for a really long time. 11 years of elementary and high school (which used to be, respectively, 8 and 3 years long in Brazil), 5 years in college, and now almost 10 years in graduate school -- that amounts to exactly 26 years of my 36 years of life (I began school at 7 and took a three year break between college and grad school).

In all these years the teacher that remains the most inspiring of all to me is "Tia" Vanda Candido (we used to call her "tia," auntie, as many children still call older women -- teachers, acquaintances, family friends -- in Brazil). She was my teacher in 3rd and 4th grades (she taught these two grades together) and then my Portuguese teacher in 6th grade.

Tia Vanda was a talented educator who not only taught us the school subjects, but allowed us to talk about many different things during school hours. I still remember that many afternoons we would have very long and entertaining conversations about life, school subjects, and whatever caught our attention at the time, while we prepared our lessons. Her handwriting was absolutely perfect, clear, round, even, enviable, really! I tried all my life to imitate it, with not much success. Then, after having a really poor Portuguese teacher in 5th grade she became my teacher in 6th grade and all of a sudden grammar, sentence ("syntactic") analysis, and writing, became easy, meaningful, and enjoyable! I still have my composition notebook from that year and, although I didn't write that well (at least not from today's standards), I got mostly As.

I have to admit that we didn't get along all the time since our temperaments clashed a bit and, because of that, she was fonder of my brother (also her student in 3rd and/or 4th grades) than of me -- she even traveled quite far to be at his wedding (she couldn't attend mine because it was on a graduation day at her school). That didn't diminish my admiration for her and she was the one who inspired me to go study language and literature (Letras) in college and then in graduate school.

Yesterday morning she passed away after a fulminating brain cancer that took her life in less than six months. I'm sorry for her husband and her three sons since she was quite young (60 something) and her illness was completely unexpected. Two weeks ago I wrote her son an email with a message to her expressing how I appreciated her, but I don't know if she was conscious enough for him to read it to her. I'm sad that I'll never be able to see her and talk to her again to let her know that her student from many years back is about to get her Ph.D. I'm sure she would be proud in knowing that she inspired me to take this path.