It is fairly cold outside, but I don’t notice. I’m simply glad to have made it to the right church, finally, after getting lost a couple of times. I surreptitiously recheck the number on the door. Yes, it is correct. Though the announcement was posted on the Stuy website, I see no other students. I make a bargain with myself; I will stay for a few more moments, perhaps someone else will come.

I see two other students from Stuyvesant approaching, and I feel less like the duckling trailing behind swans, a jeans-clad stranger in a sea of somber mourners. I will stay, I decide.

When the doors open at last, the three of us linger outside, uncertain, and then enter the small foyer. There are posters all over the dark, wooden walls. They announce church events: carol singing, holiday services. It is, after all, only just past Christmas. I look away, up at the ceiling and then down at the floor. I shift restlessly. I feel like I should avert my eyes from the people around me, but I cannot close them out.

Suddenly, noisily, one of the men begins to sob, covering his face with his hands, bawling unabashedly, the sounds echoing through the still and silent room. I look away again. I feel like a voyeur.

As we proceed into the church, the other students and I form a small huddle, none of us wanting to be the first. As we pass by the line of people standing inside to greet us, I see Mr. Maurer. He doesn’t look like my English teacher anymore. Suddenly, he is just a man, a man with dark circles under his eyes who stares over everyone’s shoulder and mutters “thank you for coming” over and over again as though he were a snow globe, wound up to play the same soulless tune until everyone is tired of it. He is just a man, a very haggard looking man, and I want to throw my arms around him and say just the right thing, but he is a teacher and I am a student and he is an adult and I am a child and I don’t have the right words anyway, if such things even exist. I feel small and grubby and altogether worthless. I walk past silently, but the afterimage of his blank eyes lingers in my mind.

As we file into the pews, we are asked to bow our heads and pray. I don’t know any real prayers, except the words “Hail Mary, full of grace,” which I remember because they sound pretty.

Oh Jesus, I know that You and I don’t get along so well. If You’re listening, though, if You’re up there, please…

I am not sure what to ask for. I’m no good at religion.

Please comfort him, Jesus, if You can. He’s such a good man, such a cheerful man, such a kind teacher.

I repeat this inadequate litany to myself until the service begins, then I stand silent, hands clenched around the smooth, polished wood of the pew in front of me. Last week, they sang Christmas carols here.

After the priest speaks, people go up to the podium one by one to talk about Maria Maurer and, one by one, are overcome with tears, forcing words out around their grief. I feel ashamed of my own heartache. Next to the grief of coworkers, friends, parents, a husband, what are my memories of an English teacher who laughingly jokes about his marriage and tells us stories of his wedding day when we read Anna Karenina? What is my grief for the man who spent a year telling us about what is meant to be a grown-up? What is a year of being teacher and student? What can my tears be worth to anybody in this room, least of all the person I want most to comfort?