Yesterday I received a text message from one of my kids that said a girl from her freshman class had died the night before. She didn't provide details so I replied and asked if she knew the girl. She replied in the affirmative. I then asked if they'd been told what had happened and she texted back that they hadn't. All she knew was that during morning announcements the principal had said that this girl had died the night before. She also said that one of her teachers had read an email from the principal that had provided a little more detail. My last question was to ask if the school had provided any counselors for kids to talk to if they needed it and she said that she hadn't heard of any. My son who also goes to school there said he assumed they had because they usually do, but he hadn't heard of anyone going to see a counselor or an announcement that counselors were available.
Later in the day I went to get my hair cut and while there the barbers told me that the girl had lived right across the street from their shop and that she'd had a tough life. She didn't know her father and her mother had moved north without her or her brother and left them to live with the girl's grandparents. Her great-grandparents lived next door and apparently they were all pretty close. A while back both great-grandparents passed away on the same night and not long after that her grandfather died. Her mother moved back home for a year but then left again to return north, again without her and her brother. Despite all that they said she seemed to be a really happy kid, always with a smile on her face.
All of this has been running through my head over the last 24 hours. What's troubling to me is that when we lose one of our students under tragic circumstances like a freak accident on the football field or a car full of students killed by a drunk driver, we tend to pay a lot of attention and go to a lot of effort to honor those students' memories. That's as it should be. On the other hand when a student dies in quiet solitude we don't seem to react the same way. If we speak of the child at all we do so in hushed whispers. We don't come together as a community to celebrate that person's life or to acknowledge the impact of their loss on our community. I think that's a shame and I think it robs our children of the opportunity to deal with the impact of losing one of their peers.
Sadly a young member of our community died two days ago and very few of us know what we've lost.
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Befuddled 
great point jon, that is a sad situation
What a sad story, Jon. It makes me wonder what was going on inside that young girl and whether she had lost hope. Thanks for sharing.
Good post, Jon. Thanks for sharing and giving us something to think about.
That sounds a lot like how my grandfather’s suicide is treated – hushed voices, etc – even more than half a century later. Some deaths are more disquieting than others, I guess.
Deb, it really is sad and I don’t know what the details are behind her
death. For that reason I struggled with whether or not to even write
the post, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow the
response to this tragedy is in itself very sad.
Thanks Arron
Literally nothing has been said so I can’t say for sure that the girl
killed herself, but of course that is everyone’s assumption. You’re
right that some deaths are more disquieting than others, but when you
think about it the processes we use to deal with peoples’ death are as
much about helping the people they leave behind as they are about
acknowledging the deceased. I think that’s especially true for
teenagers who often struggle to deal with tragedies so I worry about
the kids at this school who may be struggling with this girl’s death
and the impact it has on their own lives.
I am saddened by this tragedy. The teen years can be very difficult for some and it seems that she had more than her fair share of family struggles.