Hopelessely there

Hedwig bitterly regretted that she had taken the course in written expression. The first class had been hell - introductions took all evening because people spoke endlessely about themselves. Hedwig was the last person to speak; afterwards she doubted very much that anyone remembered her name or even her face after her hurried sentence "Hi, I'm Hedwig, I'm a dance teacher, I think that writing is also an art and I hope that I will learn a lot."
Predictably, this gave rise to one question from the trainer: "What kind of dance do you teach?" - "Oh, most dances really". Then the trainer treated them to yet another anecdote about herself and after that, class was over.

The second time, the trainer invited the class to work on a short text to put on their own gravestones. Hedwig politely listened to people with names like Barbara and Fred discussing whether an epitaph should be witty, touching, scathing or simply short. The self proclaimed poet saw a lot of merit in his own suggestion: "To the end". One of the Barbaras favoured something like "She had what it took to take what she had to make the world a better place", but that did not win much support. One of the Freds tried something like "The world's loss is his gain" but was never really able to explain what it was supposed to mean.
After her embarrassing introduction Hedwig wanted to use the epitaph to give her fellow students a glimpse of the broadness of her own talents and skills. However, she found the balancing act between self praise and distance very tricky. She did not want to claim total success but did not want to appear too bashful. She started writing, paused after two words to find the strong and apt formulation, and somehow got stuck. Long after the class was over, Hedwig realised that her failed attempt was the story of her life.

Here lies Hedwig Holstein.
SHE ALMOST