I'm not usually one to post on message boards, but I had some spare time today and your post hit a spot...

When I was a senior in high school, my mother's boyfriend John died in a motorcycle accident. My mother had a very unhappy life. She had been married three times, and she and John were together for a longer time than two of those marriages. He was a deeply spiritual man, and he was teaching her that money and job status weren't the only paths to happiness. She never managed to trick him into an arguement. For the first time in my life, she was happy almost every day. When he died, I was devistated. It didn't seem right that someone who could give so much was the one who was taken from us.
I didn't understand it. It was three years ago, and I still can't. My mother married another verbally abusive boy-man. It seemed that every personal victory she won with John, she is now loosing. She destroys herself with pills and alcohol, and she and I no longer talk. I told her I loved her and that was it. We can no longer communicate.
While John's death was increadibly painful (it was my first 'real' death) it taught me a lot. You cannot put happiness aside for tomorrow, because tomorrow may never come. Loved ones should never be taken for granted, nothing in this world is unchanging. When and if you loose them, you must carry their love in your heart. Just because they are no longer there, doesn't mean that their hopes and dreams should be forgotten. They live through your memories and your joy. You honor their memories, by your existance and continual happiness. Your principal will realize this with time, and she will also see that she is not truely alone. Our loved ones are near us, just in a place we can't see yet. No matter the religion, Love makes the ties that bind us together. In this world and the next.