Her son died at nineteen. She has been sending his former teachers a check every year on his birthday for eight years.

This is a story about a woman in Sacramento, her son who died at the age of nineteen in the spring of 2018, and the specific practice she has quietly sustained for the past eight years on each of the anniversaries of his birth.

The woman — I will call her Prudence, because she chose the name, and because when I asked her why, she said, “It is the name of a person who has decided to be quiet about something specific for a very long time, which is what I have decided to be,” which I found accurate — is fifty-nine. She works as a hospital pharmacist. She has been married for thirty-one years to a man who — she has told me — is aware of the practice but has, in the eight years, deferred to her on how it is conducted. She has one other child, a daughter, who is now twenty-four.

Her son — she has asked me to call him August, because it is a name he might have liked — died on a Tuesday morning in April of 2018. He had been, at the time of his death, a college freshman at a small state university in Northern California. He had died, in her account, of a specific medical condition that had gone undetected until the specific morning of his death.

He had been, in his mother’s careful account, “a specifically ordinary boy. He had, at nineteen, not yet done anything remarkable. He had not, in the strict sense, been given the specific time he would have needed to do anything remarkable. He had been, at nineteen, the specific version of himself that a nineteen-year-old boy is — becoming, gathering, arriving. He had not yet arrived. He would not, in the specific way that mattered, ever arrive.”

She has told me she has, over the past eight years, thought about this a great deal.

The practice began, in her account, in the fall of 2018 — approximately five months after August’s death.

The practice

I want to describe the practice carefully, because it is the specific thing this story is about.

Every year, on the specific day that would have been August’s birthday — which was, in his lifetime, in the second week of October — Prudence has written a specific set of small checks.

The checks, in her careful account, are made out to each of August’s specific former teachers.

The specific set of teachers, in her account, includes: two of August’s elementary school teachers (his second-grade teacher and his fifth-grade teacher), three of his middle school teachers (his sixth-grade English teacher, his seventh-grade math teacher, and his eighth-grade science teacher), four of his high school teachers (his freshman biology teacher, his sophomore world history teacher, his junior American literature teacher, and his senior calculus teacher), one specific after-school program coordinator who ran a chess club August attended in fifth and sixth grade, one specific piano teacher who taught August privately from the ages of nine to fourteen, one specific youth basketball coach who coached August’s team in seventh and eighth grade, one specific former Boy Scout troop leader, and one specific college freshman year professor who had — Prudence has told me — taught August a specific introductory literature seminar in the fall semester of 2017.

Fourteen teachers, in total.

She has, over eight years, written each of them a check every year.

The checks, she has told me, range from approximately $75 to approximately $300. The specific amount, she has told me, is not, in the strict sense, based on anything. She has told me: “I do not, in the eight years, have a specific formula for what each teacher gets. I write the check in the specific amount I feel, on the specific day I am writing it, that specific teacher should receive.”

She has told me the specific amounts have, over the eight years, come to approximately $18,000 in total.

She has, over eight years, mailed each of the checks with a specific short note.

The note, in each case, has read the following:

“In memory of August [last name]. Please spend it on something small that is entirely for yourself. Thank you, in a way I cannot fully express, for what you did.”

The note has not, in the eight years, been signed with Prudence’s name.

The note has not, in the eight years, contained a return address.

The note has, in the eight years, been written in a specific version of Prudence’s handwriting that she has told me is “the specific slightly formal handwriting I use when I do not want the recipient to recognize the writing as mine.”

She has told me: “I have decided, over eight years, that the specific fact of the checks being unsigned and anonymous is the specific thing that makes the practice possible for me to continue. If I signed the checks, I would be, in the specific way of grieving people who are receiving specific thanks from other grieving people, initiating the specific difficult conversation that most of these teachers, in the specific way of the eight years, would want to have with me. I do not, in the specific eight years, want to have that specific conversation with fourteen separate people every year.”

She has told me: “I have decided that the specific gift I can, at this stage, give these teachers is the specific gift of the check, and the specific gift of the note, without the specific ongoing obligation of being in relationship with a grieving mother.”

Why she does it

I asked Prudence, in each of our three conversations, why she has, over the past eight years, sustained the practice.

She has told me the answer is, in her own careful phrasing, complicated.

She has told me: “I have, over eight years, been trying to work out — in a specific way — what I owe to the specific set of people who had, in the strict sense, made the specific version of my son that he was at the time of his death. My son had, at nineteen, been a specific person. The specific person he had been was, in a specific way I have come to understand more deeply over eight years, made not only by me and by his father and by his sister. He had been, in significant part, made by the specific set of adults who had, over the specific fourteen years he had been in school, been paying specific slow attention to him.”

She has told me: “My son had a specific favorite teacher in every one of his fourteen years of school. He had, in each case, come home and told me about the specific teacher. He had, in each case, been slowly formed by the specific attention the specific teacher had paid to him.”

She has told me: “I have come to understand, over eight years, that the specific set of adults who had — over the fourteen years of his schooling — paid specific slow attention to my son was, in some meaningful way, part of the reason he was the specific person he had been. I have come to understand that when my son died, those specific adults did not, in most cases, know that he had died. He had been out of their specific classrooms for anywhere from one year to seventeen years. He had, in the specific way of children who leave their specific teachers behind, gone on to other classrooms. They had, in the specific way of teachers, gone on to other children.”

She has told me: “But the specific fact of what they had done for him — the specific years they had paid attention to him — did not, in the strict sense, end when he left their classrooms. It continued to exist inside him. It had continued to exist inside him at nineteen. It had been, in the specific way of the accumulated attention of specific adults across specific years, part of the specific version of him that he was at the specific moment he died.”

She has told me: “I have decided, over eight years, that this specific fact is worth acknowledging. I have decided that the specific set of adults who had made my son who he was — even the ones who did not, in the strict sense, know they had — deserve to be acknowledged.”

She has told me: “The specific problem is that I cannot, in any ordinary sense, acknowledge them. I cannot call them up. I cannot tell them that my son has died. I cannot tell them that he had, in his specific short life, remembered them. I cannot ask them to remember him.”

She has told me: “I can, however, send them a check. I can send them a check on the specific day that would have been his birthday. I can, in the specific note I include, tell them that the check is in memory of my son. I can, in the specific note I include, thank them — anonymously, without initiating the specific conversation — for what they did.”

She has told me: “I have decided, over eight years, that this is the specific way I can acknowledge them without asking anything from them. I have decided that this is, in the specific version of what I can do, the specific most useful thing available to me.”

What the teachers have done

I asked Prudence, in our second phone conversation, whether she knew what the specific teachers had done with the checks.

She has told me she knows, in her careful account, the following.

She has told me that of the fourteen teachers, thirteen of them have — over the past eight years — attempted, at least once, to find out who was sending them the specific check.

She has told me she knows this because the checks are drawn on her specific personal bank account. She has told me the specific bank account is in the name of her and her husband, jointly. She has told me the specific bank has, on multiple occasions over the years, been contacted by specific teachers who had received a check and had — in the specific way of a person who does not know what to do with a specific unexpected check — called the bank to inquire.

She has told me the specific bank, in the specific way of a specific bank that follows specific rules about client privacy, has — in every case — declined to provide the specific teachers with her name or her contact information.

She has told me that in each of the thirteen cases, the specific teachers have — over the years — eventually stopped inquiring. She has told me she does not, in the strict sense, know what any of the thirteen teachers have done with the specific checks. She has told me she has, over the years, deliberately not tried to find out. She has told me: “The specific gift, in the specific form I designed it, is not, in the strict sense, mine after I have sent it. The specific gift belongs to the specific teacher. The specific teacher can do whatever they want with the specific gift. Some of them, I suspect, have cashed the checks and used the money in the specific ways I suggested — for a specific small thing entirely for themselves. Some of them, I suspect, have never cashed the checks and have, instead, kept them in a specific drawer somewhere. Some of them, I suspect, have thrown the checks away without cashing them because they were, in the specific way of an unsigned check with an anonymous note, uncertain whether cashing them was the specific correct thing to do.”

She has told me: “I do not, in the strict sense, need to know. The specific act of sending the checks is, in the specific way I have designed the practice, the specific act I am doing. What happens after that is not, in the specific way of my grief, my business.”

She has told me she has, however, in the eight years, come to know something specific about one of the fourteen teachers.

The one teacher

I asked Prudence to describe the one teacher.

She has told me that of the fourteen teachers, only one has — over the past eight years — cashed every single check she has been sent, in every single year, without ever calling the bank to inquire.

She has told me the specific teacher is August’s specific former second-grade teacher — a woman Prudence has told me is now in her early seventies, who taught elementary school in Sacramento for approximately forty-two years before her retirement in 2019.

Prudence has told me she believes — though she does not, in the strict sense, know — that August’s former second-grade teacher understands who is sending the specific checks.

She has told me: “I have come to believe, over eight years, that August’s former second-grade teacher — I will not tell you her name — has, in some quiet way, figured out that the checks are from me. I do not know how she has figured this out. I know only that she has, in eight years, never called the bank. She has, in eight years, cashed each of the specific checks in a specific way I can see in my bank records — each of them approximately three weeks after I sent them. She has, in eight years, never once tried to contact me.”

She has told me: “I believe that August’s former second-grade teacher has understood — in the specific way of a specific kind of long-tenured elementary school teacher who is paying specific attention — that the specific right response to the specific anonymous checks is to cash them, without inquiring, without ceremony, without reaching out. I believe she has understood that this is the specific version of the exchange the specific sender is offering. I believe she has decided to accept the exchange in the specific terms in which it is being offered.”

She has told me: “I have decided that August’s former second-grade teacher is, in the specific way of the eight years, my specific ally in the specific practice. She does not know she is my ally. I do not know that she is my ally. I only suspect it. But the specific pattern of her behavior over eight years has, in the specific way that patterns eventually do, convinced me.”

She has told me: “I would like to write her a specific letter, at some point in the coming years, telling her what I have suspected. I would like to tell her that I have been sending the checks. I would like to tell her that I have understood, in some quiet way, that she has understood. I would like her to know that she has been, over eight years, the specific person who has made the practice easiest for me to continue.”

She has told me: “I have not, so far, written the letter. I do not know when I will. I know only that I would like to, at some point.”

The specific October afternoon

There is, in Prudence’s account, one specific October afternoon that she has, in the past eight years, thought about a great deal.

The afternoon occurred in the specific second week of October in the year 2022 — the fourth year of the practice, on the specific day that would have been August’s specific twenty-third birthday.

Prudence had, that afternoon, been in the small home office of her house in Sacramento. She had, in her account, been writing the specific fourteen checks she writes every year. She had, in her account, been about halfway through the specific set — she has told me she was writing the check for August’s specific former seventh-grade math teacher, who had — in August’s specific childhood — been the specific teacher August had, on multiple occasions, described as “the specific teacher who first made him think he might be good at something.”

Prudence had, in her own account, been in the middle of writing the check when she had, for reasons she has told me she has never been able to fully articulate, “set the pen down and cried for approximately forty-five minutes.”

She has told me the specific forty-five minutes had been, in her own account, “the specific hardest forty-five minutes of my life since the specific first year after August had died.”

She has told me she does not, in the strict sense, know why the specific forty-five minutes had been so specifically difficult.

She has told me she suspects the answer, in some way, is the following.

She has told me: “I had, at that specific moment in October of 2022, been writing a specific check for a specific teacher who had, in the specific way I have described, made my son think he might be good at something. I had, at that specific moment, been calculating that specific teacher had helped make the specific version of my son that had, at nineteen, gone off to college with the specific confidence to try things. I had, at that specific moment, been calculating that the specific things my son had gone off to try — the specific college seminars, the specific new friendships, the specific tentative attempts at figuring out who he might become — had been, in some meaningful way, made possible by the specific teacher I was writing the check to.”

She has told me: “I had, at that specific moment, been calculating that the specific set of things my son had been trying, at the specific moment he died, had — in a specific way — been the specific things the specific teacher I was writing the check to had made possible.”

She has told me: “I had, at that specific moment, been calculating that the specific teacher I was writing the check to did not know any of this. She did not know that my son had died. She did not know that I was writing her a check. She did not know that the specific thing she had done for a specific eleven-year-old boy fifteen years earlier had continued to matter through the specific final years of the specific boy’s short life.”

She has told me: “I had, at that specific moment, understood something I had not previously understood.”

She has told me: “I had understood that the specific reason I was, in the fourth year, still writing the checks was not, in the strict sense, to acknowledge what the specific teachers had done. It was to acknowledge, to myself, what the specific teachers had done. It was to give myself the specific ongoing evidence — the specific set of fourteen checks, once a year, for the specific remainder of my life — that my son had, in his short life, been paid attention to by the specific set of adults he needed to be paid attention to by. It was to give myself the specific ongoing proof that the specific ordinary years of his specific ordinary life had been, in the specific ways that mattered, adequate.”

She has told me: “I had, at that specific moment, cried because I had understood — for the first time in four years — that the specific practice was, in a specific way, mine. It was for me. It was not, in the strict sense, for the fourteen teachers.”

She has told me: “I have, in the four years since, continued the practice anyway. I have continued it because the specific act of doing something for myself, once a year, on the specific day that would have been my son’s birthday, is — I have come to believe — a specific thing that a grieving mother is, in the specific way I understand grief now, permitted to do.”

She has told me: “I have decided that the specific practice is, in the specific way of small quiet ongoing acts of self-care, worth continuing. I do not, in the specific eight years, plan to stop.”

Why she has not told anyone

I asked Prudence, in our final conversation, why she has not — in the eight years — told anyone about the specific practice.

She has told me she has, in her own careful account, told three people over the eight years. She has told her husband. She has told her daughter. She has told me.

She has not, in her own account, told anyone else.

She has told me the reasons are the following.

She has told me: “I have not told anyone else because I do not, in the specific way of the eight years, want the specific practice to be, in any way, public. I do not want, in the specific way of grieving people who have developed specific ongoing practices, to be admired for the specific practice. I do not want, in the specific way of grieving people who have developed specific ongoing practices, to be pitied for the specific practice. I do not want, in the specific way of grieving people who have developed specific ongoing practices, to be asked about the specific practice.”

She has told me: “The specific practice is mine. It is between me and my son. It is between me and the specific fourteen teachers, in the specific way that we — the specific fifteen of us, only one of whom is dead — have quietly agreed to be in this specific ongoing arrangement together. The specific arrangement does not, in the specific way of the eight years, benefit from being observed by other people.”

She has told me: “The specific reason I am telling you — in the specific way of the eight years, only the fourth person I have told — is because I have, in the past six months, read a specific set of the articles you have been writing for your publication. I have come to believe, in the specific way of a specific reader who is beginning to understand what a specific publication is about, that you might understand the specific practice in a specific way that would not, in the specific way of a reader of your publication, damage the practice by writing about it.”

She has told me: “I would like the specific practice to be, in some future form, described. I would like the specific description to exist, in some public form, in a way that other grieving parents might, at some future point, encounter. I would like other grieving parents to know that this specific version of a specific ongoing practice is available to them. I would like other grieving parents to know that the specific act of quietly acknowledging the specific adults who had, in specific ways, made their specific children who they were is, in the specific way I have come to understand it, a specific version of ongoing love that is available to them.”

She has told me: “This is, in the specific way I would like to communicate it, the specific reason I have told you. It is not, in the strict sense, for me. It is for the specific future parents who will, at some point, need to know that the specific version of the practice I have been sustaining is a specific version they can, if they want, adapt for their own use.”

She has told me: “I would like the specific practice to be one of the specific things your publication has, over its specific run, quietly made available to other people. I would like this, in the specific way I have come to understand your publication, to be enough.”

What this is

I have, in the weeks since I first heard this story, thought about the specific ways that some grieving parents develop specific ongoing practices for acknowledging the specific set of people who had, over the specific years of their child’s short life, made the specific child who they were. Prudence has, over the past eight years, been running a specific practice that she has designed to acknowledge fourteen specific adults without, in the strict sense, requiring any of them to be in an ongoing relationship with her about her son’s death.

The specific practice is, in the specific way of the arrangements this publication has been quietly describing, a specific quiet act of care sustained by a specific person, over a specific long period of time, in the specific absence of anyone asking her to sustain it. It is, in the specific way of practices that develop after specific losses, a specific version of ongoing love. It is a specific way of continuing to be a mother — of continuing to be, in the specific way of a mother who has lost her son, in relationship with the specific set of adults who had, over the specific years of the son’s short life, quietly done what she asked of them without her ever needing to ask.

I do not know exactly what to make of this. I think it is, in the specific way of the practices Prudence has told me she would like other grieving parents to know is available to them, extraordinary. I think it is, in the specific way of the practices this publication has been describing, something the ordinary systems of grief support do not, in the specific way they are typically organized, address. (For a related earlier piece on the specific ways that certain people, after the death of a specific person they loved, quietly develop specific ongoing practices around the specific memory of that person, see the Wattalife story about the woman in Duluth who has, for seventeen years, been quietly maintaining her late brother’s woodworking shop every Sunday afternoon.)

Prudence told me, at the end of our final conversation, that she had, in the past week, been in her small home office. She had been, in her own account, “starting to think about what I will write in this year’s fourteen checks. This year’s checks will be written in the second week of October, which is now approximately three months away.”

She has told me she has, in her own careful phrasing, been thinking about the specific set of amounts.

She has told me she has, over the past eight years, gradually raised the specific amounts as her family’s specific financial situation has improved. She has told me she plans, in this year’s checks, to raise the specific amounts slightly. She has told me the specific reason is that “the specific teachers I am writing to are, in the specific way of retired teachers, getting older. The specific small pleasures the specific checks are meant to fund are, in the specific way of specific older people’s small pleasures, becoming more expensive. I would like the specific checks to keep pace with the specific inflation of the specific small pleasures they are meant to fund.”

She has told me she has, in the past week, been thinking specifically about August’s former second-grade teacher.

She has told me she has, in the past week, been considering — in some quiet way — writing the specific letter she has, over the years, occasionally thought about writing.

She has told me she has not, in the past week, made a specific decision.

She has told me she has, in the past week, understood the following.

She has told me: “I have understood that the specific reason I have not, in eight years, written the specific letter to August’s former second-grade teacher is that I have been, in the specific way of the eight years, holding it in reserve. I have been holding it for the specific moment I might, at some future point, need it. I have been holding it as the specific thing I can, at some future difficult moment, do. I have been keeping it available, in the specific way of a specific small piece of ongoing hope, for the specific moment I might need it.”

She has told me: “I do not, this year, need it. I have decided, this year, that I will continue to hold it in reserve. I will, this year, write the fourteen checks. I will, this year, mail them anonymously. I will, this year, continue the specific practice in the specific form I have been continuing it in.”

She has told me: “I will keep the specific letter in reserve for whatever specific future moment I might, at some point in the coming years, need it.”

She has told me: “This is, in the specific way of the eight years, enough.”

—

Margot Hale is the editor of Wattalife. She has, since reporting this story, been considering the specific set of teachers who had, over the specific years of her own schooling, made her who she is. She has identified — in her own careful account — approximately seven of them. She has decided, tentatively, to try to find out where each of them is currently living. She has not yet decided what she will do with the information once she has it. She has decided that the specific act of trying to find them is, at this stage, enough.