Death at 15

The following is a repost of something I wrote during my second year teaching, in the wake of one of my students dying of cancer. After I posted it and people noticed, my admin told me to take it down—I removed her name instead. Nearly nine years later, I’m still wearing my “Hudson Heroes” wristband, so it’s practically a tattoo at this point. Danielle is gone but not forgotten, and she is still a positive presence in my life. Rereading it now after the death of one of my friends and colleagues, I stand behind what I felt and wrote (which is rare for me). When I addressed my class this week, I repeated some of these sentiments; I’m particularly proud I called out our mainstream media as “fake life” in 2013. The biggest difference this week was that the roles were reversed.. I was the one red-eyed and teary, and my students were more distant from the tragedy and less directly affected, or at least it seemed that way.

When you’re fifteen, you’re supposed to feel invincible. Whether you agree with that or not, a majority of fifteen-year-olds do feel invincible. I did.

People say it’s unnatural for parents to bury a child. I’m not sure if it’s unnatural, or just statistically unlikely in the 21st century. This might be because I’m an economics teacher and I think of everything in graphs and ratios, or it might be because I’m a history teacher and I have a decent grasp of average lifespan in different time periods. Throughout most of history, parents burying children has been a common practice at worst. When you account for low infant mortality rates, plagues, wars, and the rest, the fact is death was a constant presence in everyday life.  

A sophomore at Scottsdale Prep died from cancer last week. She was diagnosed with brain cancer as a freshman, and gone a year later.

I didn’t really know this girl, but I taught her sister last year. Her death, though it wasn’t a complete surprise, caused shock waves throughout the school. It’s one thing to say someone has less than a year to live, it’s another thing entirely for that person to die. The sophomores in particular were affected. I teach the sophomores. I had half of them in the fall semester, and the other half this semester. When she died, her section had been under my watch for less than a week. Though I officially had her section, 10A, I never taught her. They had economics during first period, and when she came to school it was always later in the day. She is still on my attendance roster.  

When she was initially diagnosed, she wasn’t given long to live. Even with this information, and frequent chemotherapy treatments, she kept coming to school. She was in a wheelchair and other students would take turns helping her from class to class. I saw her at more than a few home basketball games in the first semester. In fact, she was at a basketball game the week before she passed away.

It was a Wednesday morning when we were informed she had taken a bad turn and was in critical condition. I didn’t know what to do with this information. When I showed up to my first period class, quizzes in hand, I walked into a room full of red-eyed and teary students. Today is not going to go according to plan.  

So, what can a teacher do in this situation? I had no idea. I can’t pretend to identify with them, I can’t pretend like everything is alright, and, because I was so aware of the first two impossibilities, I can’t successfully distract them. To make the situation more complicated, I had the entire spectrum of grieving kids in both my economics classes. There were some outright crying, some entirely unreachable, some trying to console others, some wishing they felt something, and some who were desperate for normalcy. I felt like all of them were looking to me for guidance, for a response.

In essence, I told them I didn’t know what the best response was. I told them some of my thoughts from the preceding paragraph. I told them I wasn’t going to give them homework, but that I would assign optional writing assignments in class. Those who wanted could leave the class (theoretically to visit the grief counselor) or work on something else.

This was the story for three days. Her health had plummeted Tuesday night, and she passed away after school Thursday.

Though I had observed the grieving around me, the impact of her life and death weren’t real to me until that night. Several of my friends and I had planned to attend a jazz choir and improv show at the school. In the wake of her death, the program was changed to become a tribute to her. Many students read poems, sang songs, or otherwise publicly demonstrated what she meant to them. We all cried that night.

The school issued a statement all the teachers were supposed to read in first period Friday. I understand the value of official statements. I decided the value was negative in this case. Instead, I paraphrased the statement and included some of my own thoughts. Briefly, I told them I believe everything happens for a reason and everything eventually works out for good, though often it’s easier to perceive chaos and evil in the world. The education at Scottsdale Prep is intended to help us sort through what is important and what is not, to discover meaning in life, and to live with purpose. This is what the “Prep” is for. Then I asked if anyone wanted to say anything. After a few seconds one boy suggested the whole class hold hands around our discussion table and pray. We did. A few students prayed to God, a few others just spoke to her as if she was still there. It was good.    

Is there a takeaway here?

You want to protect the ones you love. Parents want to protect children, teachers want to protect students. I wanted to do anything I could to minimize the hurt those kids were feeling. But is that the best instinct? It’s a losing battle, with that approach. Bad things happen. This is why the prospect of having children of my own is terrifying—watching them struggle will be infinitely worse than experiencing those same struggles firsthand. I think the goal should be to prepare the ones you love. Otherwise, you just have a sheltered child and an imminent disaster. They need a ready defense for the world and the pain it brings. They need faith and hope and love.

We live in an entertainment culture. Entertain me until I die, so I never have to confront my impending death. Everything is a distraction. We are sheltered from death. You can’t talk about it, you don’t know how to feel when you see it—this is why grief counselor is a legitimate occupation. Even worse, we see death non-stop in fake life. In movies and video games and TV shows and yeah-I’m-gonna-call-the-news “fake life”. You think this doesn’t have a detachment effect? You think you have an accurate understanding of what losing someone is like, just from observation? I’ve said it before, you can’t fully understand something until it happens to you. The death of a friend is no exception. You can read about heroes losing their closest friend in all the classics, but it’s never really real. If it happens to you, you’ll never be able to read that story the same way again. THIS is the emotion the author originally wanted you to feel, and now you’ll never forget it.  

Maybe those fifteen-year-olds don’t feel so invincible now. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s a tragedy, too.