Mishler

The below text just rolled out of me after I heard that Diane Mishler, teacher of English, theatre, and real life died in December 2024. I am posting it unedited and with the disclosure that it represents a person I knew from 1978-80. I had the opportunity to read it at her idiosyncratic memorial service yesterday, which included a kite, roses to deconstruct and scatter, and Elvis singing graveside. The gift of her death was being able to reconnect with classmates not seen since 1980 and remembering that high school was not completely terrible. Her loss reconnected me to friends distant in time and space who I felt immediately at home with and to new folks I hope to see again.

Shether: In remembrance of Mishler

A remembrance of Diane Mishler

She was the kind of teacher that inspires movies and nightmares. Mishler. That's what we called her. She was the first Ms. I ever knew and she led the fight for women & girls to be able to wear pants to school in the 1970s. She loved crisp bacon, worshipped the sun, and smoked like a chimney despite which she lived into her 80s. Her birthday was April 17, which I have remembered each year but never managed to send a card. One day on her mom's birthday, she told us we could use the pay phone to call her mom. That, I did.

She was one of the first people to push me in positive ways. I had horrific performance anxiety, but she made me take a role in Thurber Carnival and I loved it. She was good friends with the big yelly gym teacher (the enemy!) which seemed weird, but later I figured out that they were staunch members of the teachers union and fought together for better contracts. She was good trouble. She was an atheist who loved Christmas and kept a tree up year-round in her basement. You could tell her anything and she wouldn't narc on you, but would tell you what she really thought. She said fuck a lot. She was fierce, magnificent & funny.

When I was pregnant with Dex I went to visit her and her only parenting advice was to buy your children beautiful books. I think of Liz, her daughter, my friend, who is grieving and wonder about the beauty and burden it must have been to have a mom who rose from and loomed over our midwesterness like the Empire State Building. There hasn't been a week pass in my life since 1980 when I haven't thought of Mishler.