The uncontrollable reflex of making meaning of random events

After three and a half years of working with the Community Arts Sustaining Academics at Hurley Elementary, it was decided that what I was doing with and for the students and what the School Administration would like to do with the students were no longer coalescing in the administration's interest. Having to show evidence that the program coordinators are working with their partners schools, they let me go. Today was my last day at Hurley Elementary, and I was touched by how much people there saw me as a part of their community, and their genuine surprise and heart-rending disappointment that I was going, and that my transition from there was only one day. I told my students the news and many of them responded with a loud and whining "Why?!" followed by a resolute "I'm just not going to come to class anymore." which also had the sting of feeling scorned. After all, this was not the end of school year fare well, but a sudden withdrawal and change in their routine. We took a photo together, and then I explained what we would be doing in class that day, how the class was going to change in a broader sense with the new art teacher, and that I would miss all of them very much.
Both before and after class, I sought out the people who I had worked with in the past three and a half years and gave them a small sealed "Thank you" card personalized with a short thank you for all the ways in which they had welcomed me and made me a part of their community, and how I cherished what they had done.  Some people, including in the administration expressed surprise and a palpable sense of disappointment, as if my departure was an injustice to them on some level. It was very heartwarming what they shared with me in my last work day. At the end of class, each of my students wanted to give me a hug, so I obliged. I organized the materials as neatly as I could in the cramped storage space, grabbed my bag and walked out of the building. Having been notified about my transition from the program, I had already mourned and basically accepted the reality of what was happening. To a certain degree, it paralleled my experiences bidding my farewells to friends, colleagues, and professors when I was deployed to Iraq. They were more distraught than I was at the moment.
On the drive home, listening to my playlist, two songs played consecutively; a paring which begged, and reflexively claimed meaning. Individually, and in any other context you can put any two songs together and assign them a meaning based on the situation. I had paired the song "Disarm" by The Smashing Pumpkins with an eight kilometer ruck march in Basic Training. My best friend had sent me the lyrics in a letter and I had read them prior to the march so fragmented memory of how the song went played in cadence with my footsteps. The song "Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service is forever associated with my family and a friend and his son dropping me off at the airport post Easter Sunday before I deployed to Baghdad. Given the context of those sample situations, the lyrics from the songs, such a memory is very strongly imprinted to those melodies. So after the ordeal of saying farewell to my students, and my seemingly sudden departure from the program, the songs "Used" by Sacha Sacket, immediately followed by "Risk of Change" by Holcombe Waller summed up both the mild bitterness from being let go, but also the ideals I would like to further embody in this new calendar year.
I do hope that my kids have been changed for the better, and they remember fondly the time they had spent in my class.