The Aerie
So... how do you tell your eight-year-old that his former first grade
teacher has committed suicide?
He was exactly who my youngest needed, a teacher with both spine and
heart willing to go the extra mile to help an "active and alert" child
fit in to the expectations of his first grade year. And with a name
like "Mr. Littlebear," well, who could ask for any thing more?
Maybe you couldn't ask for more, but he gave more anyway. He was
willing to work with our "active and alert" youngest boy, giving slack
where needed, and being firm where necessary. Guiding him, rather than
breaking him. He probably made a complete difference in how our
youngest approached school. And it was clear how much he cared for his
children.
He was a gentle man with a quiet smile and wavy blond hair. Despite
having grown up on an Indian reservation he looked like a white man,
and maybe that made life a little harder for him. It certainly
startled the homeless men he accosted drinking on the railroad tracks
behind the school. When they ignored his request to leave off drinking
where the children could see them, he repeated his request in their
native Ojibwe: startled, they apologized and complied.
His life might have been unlivable due to cancer. After fighting to
get his job back after being laid off last year, he missed the last
three months of school in the hospital with an unspecified cancer.
And maybe it was because he was a gay teacher. Oh, I don't know that
he was, but he set off my gaydar something fierce, and he shares...
ugh, shared... an address with another man. So maybe that made his
life harder. It's not like you can be very 'out' as a teacher, when
any homophobic nitwit can lodge a complaint and get you fired.
Or it may have been that he had AIDS. Again, I don't know this, I'm
just speculating. When my wife took my kids to visit him in the
hospital he explained the caps, goggles, gloves and gowns on his
nurses by saying that the chemotherapy treatments had "made his blood
toxic." And maybe it had. Regardless whether he had AIDS or just plain
cancer, he was very ill.
Whatever his reasons, I guess they don't matter. I guess I'm just
trying to understand. But he waited until the final day of school and
ended his life out in the woods near his home. He was found today, the
first day of summer vacation, by the departing vice principal of the
school. At the behest of Mr. Littlebear's roommate, the vice-principal
had travelled half an hour out to his house to find out why Mr.
Littlebear was missing last night.
It will be hard on so many people. My neighbors were even closer to
him. They had visited him multiple times in the hospital, and had
videotaped a greeting from him to his class. Recently he tried to call
them, but they did not return his call immediately. They didn't know
it would be too late.
So what do I do? Do I tell the kids before someone else does, or do I
wait? What do I tell an eight year old about death?
I remember last year, we had stopped by the school playground before
the end of summer vacation, and there was Mr. Littlebear in the
parking lot. We were so excited to see him! In its usual the dumbass
fashion, the Minnesota school system had had laid him off in the
spring, with no guarantee that he would be re-hired in the autumn, so
both he and we were relieved to see him back.
At that time he mentioned that the school's deaf/hard-of-hearing
teacher would not be returning, and I asked why. Grimacing and
gesturing at the children, he shook his head. After I'd bid the
children go and play on the equipment he confided, "She killed
herself." with a sad shake of his head.
Suicide isn't painless. And he knew it. He must have been in terrible
agony to allow himself to forget all the pain we would feel when he
was gone. Suicide is always the ultimate act of selfishness, but it's
hard to be angry at Mr. Littlebear. I'll never know what pain he felt,
and while I resent his abrupt departure I can't judge him.
I had a friend-turned-lover many years ago who was severely manic
depressive. On her "up" days she could charm the wings off an angel.
On her down days she repeatedly threatened suicide. Over time I
crossed the spectrum from scared and responsive to angry and
challenging. "Everytime you threaten to kill yourself, you threaten
the life of someone I love," I once snarled at her.
Fortunately she got the help she needed, even if it involved
electroshock therapy and powerful drugs: today she's a wife and
mother. She found a way to move forward.
I have another dear friend of twenty years who is valiantly fighting
her way back from the same darkness. The jury is not in yet, but I'd
say things are looking good for her. Knock wood. Did I say "I hate
cancer"? I'm sorry, I guess I meant "I hate cancer and depression."
I can't judge Mr. Littlebear. I don't know what horrible burdens he
may have been carrying which he needed to put aside. But I guess it's
fair to say that I wish it hadn't turned out this way. I wish he could
have somehow tolerated his experience. This way, he may have had to
take it, but I can can't approve of this kind of shortcut to destiny.
And now I have to figure out what to say to my children.
I think that I will say that Mr. Littlebear was very sick. I think
that I will say that sometimes when people are very, very sick,
sometimes they don't get better. But you have to be so very sick that
you're in the hospital, and even then most of the time you get better.
But in some rare cases, I'll say, a person can be so sick that they
die. Mr. Littlebear had an illness. It started in his body, but by the
end, maybe, it got into his mind. It made him so sick and sad that he
couldn't live anymore.
I don't think I want to use the word 'suicide'. I think I'll say that
they may hear stories and words used to describe Mr. Littlebear's
death. And some of those stories and words may sound scary. But the
truth is, nobody really knows in the end what made him so sick that he
died. Sometimes, though, people try to understand by telling each
other stories of what they THINK happened, in order to see if those
stories feel better. Some may be more true than others, but what's
important, in the end, is that Mr. Littlebear died of a very serious
illness. It's not something that anyone else you know is likely to
get, because it's so very rare, and it's nothing you can catch.
But the most important thing to remember about Mr. Littlebear is that
he was a very good, very kind man. The sickness hurt his body, and it
may have confused his mind, but his heart and his soul remained the
same. And in his heart he cared about all his students.
I think that's what I'll tell them.
*phew*
This year has had entirely too much death.
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Posted by Albatross at June 11, 2003 12:00 AM