In the first few days after Thanksgiving, I was starting to feel better about the semester. There were only a few weeks left, and the overwhelming nature of grading was starting to wane as we finished things up. My seniors were getting antsy, of course, but they were also starting to be concerned about their grades, which meant they were buckling down to finish strong. I was feeling less stress and anxiety over everything, and instead far more at ease as I looked toward Winter Break and second semester.
Then, on Wednesday night, I got a phone call that changed everything.
I almost didn't answer -- the number was not one I recognized, and I usually don't pick those up. But it was about 7:50pm, and I'd come from meeting my counselor about two hours before. At that session, we'd exchanged phone numbers just in case we needed to change our schedule, and so I picked up my phone that night expecting to confirm next week and move on.
But it wasn't him.
It was my building principal, a man I trust and respect but not an administrator I'm close with -- no reason against it, he's just not the one I interact with most often and so he maintains the distance of a boss instead of a coworker.
He was calling with bad news, he said. There had been a car accident out on a windy road near Herbert High, a single car accident where a sophomore lost control of his vehicle and hit a tree. He wasn't wearing his seat belt, and he had been ejected.
He was killed.
I listened to my principal, and it was like everything around me stopped. I remember saying "oh my god" at one point, remember gasping in horror and nodding frantically as if he could see me and thanking him for calling me personally. I heard him say that he wanted to call all of this student's teachers individually, that we'd have a staff meeting early the next morning, and that an email would go through later that night so the whole faculty would know.
His voice didn't shake, though I could hear his hesitations, the underlying control he was trying to maintain. He probably had to make that phone call 30 times that night, and all were probably like mine: all as matter of fact as possible, all trying to being strong for the people he had to tell.
I started getting text messages a few hours later as I sat on my couch, arms around my knees. My husband sat beside me; I'd been crying on him for what felt like hours, and had finally cried myself out for the night, so we were watching TV.
The email had gone out -- my friends had received it, and they'd checked our online gradebook for this student's schedule. Upon finding his name in my class, they'd reached out to me.
The next morning. I'm... not sure I can write about the next morning, even though I'm sitting here typing almost a month later.
My sophomores were already a mess. I gave more hugs than I knew possible, I broke down in sobs more times than I could count, and more people came to me to hug me and try to console me than at any other point in my life. All of this was before 7:45am, when the staff meeting began.
I... don't know what else to write about here. I want to write about that day, I want to write about the funeral itself, but I ... can't.
This was the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, the first few days of December, and I'm still trying to process it. I don't want to forget, but it still feels surreal, even now, when it's been almost a month since that phone call.
The weekend after he died, I tried to grade a large group of sophomore essays. They were the last big grades for the semester, and my students needed them done before finals, which started the 15th. I stared at them for hours that weekend, trying to read them.
I couldn't.
They just... didn't matter, anymore. How could they? How could a 16-year-old's interpretation of a sonnet matter when one of their classmates, one of my students, was dead?
Those essays sat ungraded for a long time.
In just a few hours, 2016 will start. In a few days, the spring semester will start.
My student won't be back at school. I spoke with him Wednesday during class, and on Thursday he was gone. He will always be gone.
He will miss out on snow days and the spring dance, on summer break and class rings, on choosing a college and celebrating the start of his last semester of high school, on prom and Senior Skip Day and graduation, he will miss all of it.
He will miss every major event of a person's life. His friends will feel his absence for years, possibly forever, and his family will never be the same.
And I, his teacher, and not a teacher he was particularly close to, still cannot say aloud that my student was killed in a car crash without crying.
How can one life so affect another?
I almost didn't answer -- the number was not one I recognized, and I usually don't pick those up. But it was about 7:50pm, and I'd come from meeting my counselor about two hours before. At that session, we'd exchanged phone numbers just in case we needed to change our schedule, and so I picked up my phone that night expecting to confirm next week and move on.
But it wasn't him.
It was my building principal, a man I trust and respect but not an administrator I'm close with -- no reason against it, he's just not the one I interact with most often and so he maintains the distance of a boss instead of a coworker.
He was calling with bad news, he said. There had been a car accident out on a windy road near Herbert High, a single car accident where a sophomore lost control of his vehicle and hit a tree. He wasn't wearing his seat belt, and he had been ejected.
He was killed.
I listened to my principal, and it was like everything around me stopped. I remember saying "oh my god" at one point, remember gasping in horror and nodding frantically as if he could see me and thanking him for calling me personally. I heard him say that he wanted to call all of this student's teachers individually, that we'd have a staff meeting early the next morning, and that an email would go through later that night so the whole faculty would know.
His voice didn't shake, though I could hear his hesitations, the underlying control he was trying to maintain. He probably had to make that phone call 30 times that night, and all were probably like mine: all as matter of fact as possible, all trying to being strong for the people he had to tell.
I started getting text messages a few hours later as I sat on my couch, arms around my knees. My husband sat beside me; I'd been crying on him for what felt like hours, and had finally cried myself out for the night, so we were watching TV.
The email had gone out -- my friends had received it, and they'd checked our online gradebook for this student's schedule. Upon finding his name in my class, they'd reached out to me.
The next morning. I'm... not sure I can write about the next morning, even though I'm sitting here typing almost a month later.
My sophomores were already a mess. I gave more hugs than I knew possible, I broke down in sobs more times than I could count, and more people came to me to hug me and try to console me than at any other point in my life. All of this was before 7:45am, when the staff meeting began.
I... don't know what else to write about here. I want to write about that day, I want to write about the funeral itself, but I ... can't.
This was the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, the first few days of December, and I'm still trying to process it. I don't want to forget, but it still feels surreal, even now, when it's been almost a month since that phone call.
The weekend after he died, I tried to grade a large group of sophomore essays. They were the last big grades for the semester, and my students needed them done before finals, which started the 15th. I stared at them for hours that weekend, trying to read them.
I couldn't.
They just... didn't matter, anymore. How could they? How could a 16-year-old's interpretation of a sonnet matter when one of their classmates, one of my students, was dead?
Those essays sat ungraded for a long time.
In just a few hours, 2016 will start. In a few days, the spring semester will start.
My student won't be back at school. I spoke with him Wednesday during class, and on Thursday he was gone. He will always be gone.
He will miss out on snow days and the spring dance, on summer break and class rings, on choosing a college and celebrating the start of his last semester of high school, on prom and Senior Skip Day and graduation, he will miss all of it.
He will miss every major event of a person's life. His friends will feel his absence for years, possibly forever, and his family will never be the same.
And I, his teacher, and not a teacher he was particularly close to, still cannot say aloud that my student was killed in a car crash without crying.
How can one life so affect another?
Please note: I may come back to this and try to finish what I've left blank. It may be another post. While I don't know what to write now, and while I'm struggling with typos given the tears I can't keep back, writing about him helps. It helps me remember, and it helps me grieve, and so at some point, I will continue.
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