I'd been under the impression that he and Reed were fairly close so I wasn't sure what the impact to the normal flow of things was going to be. At the end of class Reed told a Zen story that was a favorite of Morris. While he was doing this he became choked up. He was not ashamed of being emotional, which I thought was pretty great. He was showing the kids that it was okay to be open about it.
Class warmup was more of the new sparring exercises which focus heavily on movement. It's a lot of fun to move around in odd shapes and patterns, but it'll take awhile before any of that becomes second nature.
While the rest of the class focused on sparring and drills I worked with Sarah on her Black Belt test. I'm usually a bit dubious about providing oversight, but she looked great and all the questions I had turned out to be moot when we reviewed my questions with Reed.
From what I understand from Reed, folks rarely pass their first test, but from what I saw her doing she seems leaps and bounds better than other folks I witnessed. Of course everyone is different at their test, so that remains to be seen.
After class was held at Reed's house which turned out be to be a twenty minute drive in traffic. Thankfully my car had air conditioning. I worked on my two bird katas with Daniel for about a half hour before my time ran out.
We were able to process a bit more about Morris' passing. Fifty years of teaching and touching possibly fifty thousand lives. I kept wondering about his wife of 30 years. Being left alone at that point in your life seemed horrible to me. I don't know anything about them, but I hope they had good friends and family. I don't believe they had children so I hope there are some extended family to help.
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