PART OF THE COMMUNITY

This past year, I've outlived two of my students. One of them, Kim, died quietly near the end of last year's summer vacation. The other one, Tim, died this past week. When a teenager that I know dies, it is always a time of reflection for me: I am thirty five years old; for some cosmic reason, I get to live twice as many years--it doesn't seem right or fair. It is also a time of sadness.

Shared grief is a strange thing. It is as though there are always ripples, like from a pebble thrown into a pond, of mourning emanating out from the departed. Those hit the hardest are the family and loved ones who experience that bleak, stark, overwhelming first realization that they will no longer have the company of the person they loved. The next tier is composed of good friends who are also hit pretty hard. Then, acquaintances and colleagues are hit with a ripple of grief that is not so driven by the loss the departed as it is driven by a forced contemplation of the mortality of self and others--this ripple causes the memory of past losses to be felt anew.

These ripples of mourning continue to recede in intensity until they dissipate into the realm that the Butthole Surfers refer to with the song title "Strangers Die Every Day" (or to make it more political, "Iraqis die every day"). People die constantly, all the time, but we are rarely troubled by it. It is only when we are within a particular emotional radius that we are troubled by death.

Twice this year has student death put me in the third tier of grief.

Kim was a gothy, black-wearing, heavy eye-liner applying, tough chick. She was smart. She had good taste in music. She had a pretty sharp wit. I admired her rebel outlook and independence. We sometimes struggled for dominance in the classroom, but I had respect for her. Fortunately, I guess, she died during the summer break: the loss wasn't so sudden; most of her friends and I had not seen her for a couple of months. Her death was sad, but it seemed easier to digest for me and the school community. Her passing, however, was still a time of reflection and sadness.

Tim's death, on the other hand, was both sudden and high profile; it was very present, very now. Here is a local newspaper account of his passing. Last Monday, numerous students whith whom I am close were crying. The sadness has lingered all week. I was not very close to Tim at all. When he was my student two years ago, he was actually pretty annoying. I think I gave him more d-halls than any other student in that class. But he was a nice guy--his annoyances were usually goofing around to entertain his friends; it's ultimately hard to hold a guy responsible for just wanting to make his friends smile. He made me smile on many occasions, too. His loss is a drag. The thing that's really gotten me this week, however, is seeing so many of his and my mutual friends experiencing such great pain. It's brought up my own memories of loss. I find that, unintentionally, I am grieving, too. Whether or not I like this god-forsaken, superstitious, hostile-to-outsiders town where I work, I am a part of the community, for better or worse. I share its sadness.

This past week has been tough.

Here is a link to a student site with some pics of Tim and an obituary of sorts. The memorial stuff should be up for a while, I think.

Finally, I dedicate this song to Tim and his loved ones and everybody else in the world experiencing grief and sadness.

(On a related depressing note, fellow blogger, Meris, has also been experiencing loss and grief this past week. Check out her post over at Auguries of Innocence*.)

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