When the Unimaginable Happens

The first time I dealt with the impact of a friend’s death on my students was in the winter of 1989.  The teenager who died wasn’t even a student at my school, but he had been years earlier – and he was still a close friend of several of the students whom I taught.  Even in the days before social media, the word of Travis Shedd’s death spread quickly. . . and while I’d like to think that my twenty-four year-old self was better than average at dispensing words of wisdom and comfort, I was also mature enough to realize that sometimes, there are no words.  I didn’t suffer a personal loss when Travis died, but I grieved for the kids who were grieving.

During the more than twenty-five years since, I’ve experienced a number of student deaths. . . former students who had graduated, current students whom (like Travis) I hadn’t taught but whose deaths broke the hearts of students that I was teaching, and one former student whom I wasn’t teaching at the time but who was still a student at our school when she died in a car accident.  One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was to look at two of Lacey Brown’s classmates after they realized that the wordless conversation that they witnessed between principal Becky Barden and me that day after school as we were waiting for word on Lacey’s condition meant that I knew something – and tell them that Lacey didn’t make it.  Almost seven years later, I would face a similar task when I had to announce to a group of sophomores during the middle of a test that one of their classmates, Ray Harris, had been found dead in his room that morning.  Regardless of the circumstances, each one of those deaths has cut away at my heart. . . whether I was grieving my own loss or the loss of students whom I cared about.

And that is why I will never forget the evening of June 26, 2015.  I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed and trying to ignore everything political that crossed my path – a difficult task on that day, to say the least – when I read a post from a recent Thomson High School alum who is one of my Facebook friends.  As soon as I saw Will’s comment that the Class of 2016 had lost one of its members, I quickly glanced down at the article that he shared in the post.  I did teach and/or work with in one-act play about thirty members of the rising senior class, and the first thing that crosses a teacher’s mind upon seeing news like that is, “Please don’t let it be one of my kids.”  (Even if you’ve wanted to strangle them a million times, even if they’ve backtalked you, even if you’ve caught them cheating, even if you don’t always like what they do. . . you always love them, and they’re still your kids.  Losing one of them still breaks your heart.)

 When I saw the name, I literally gasped.  “Oh, no.”

Kori Penna wasn’t one of my kids.  She was, however, one of the best friends of three people who are – and while my heart didn’t break for myself, it broke for those three girls.  (If you’ve seen the story about Kori’s death on WRDW, you’ve met them on your TV screen.)

I taught, coached, and directed nearly 200 students this past year, my first at THS.  I joked with lots of them. . . a few popped into my room at random times just to visit and good-naturedly (I think!) aggravate me.  Of all of those students, though, twins Kattie and Kimmie were probably the ones to whom I grew the closest.  Kattie was in one of my Spanish I classes and a member of the one-act play cast; Kimmie auditioned but had a pretty serious four-wheeler accident after she left school the day of auditions and wasn’t able to return in time to start rehearsals for the play.  Instead, she came to practices with Kattie and became a hard-working part of our crew.  Long after one-act was over, they’d pop by my classroom toward the end of my planning period after they came back from clinicals for their health occupations class or between classes to visit. . . they even came by one morning when they had a sub and found themselves “stuck” in my room when we went on lockdown moments after they came in.  It says something about how much they visited that when Kimmie’s Spanish II teacher was afraid that she might not turn her second semester exemption card in on time, she asked me to be sure to remind her if I saw her.  If I taught you many years ago, you’re probably remembering a time when students popping in to chat was the norm. . . but you have to remember that I’m no longer the young, cool teacher that students tend to gravitate toward.  I’m closer to the age of some of my current students’ grandmothers than I am to the age of their mothers, and one’s cool factor takes a hit as one ages.  (For the record, that’s not an inherently bad thing.)  However, it’s still pretty nice to have a few students who do enjoy my company even when it’s not mandated by a bell schedule, and the fact that they did meant a lot to me.  (They probably don’t know that, but it’s true.)

 
I also got to know Allison through one-act.  Our play last year was “Persephone,” and one of the characters in that play is Cerberus, the three-headed watchdog of Hades.  (Well, in the world of the play, he has only one head. . . the other two are just papier-mâché fakes “to make him look ferocious.”)  Now, the last time I directed this play, I cast a student whom I knew and felt confident wouldn’t be offended at the prospect of my giving her the role of a dog. . . I could tell from Allison’s audition that her super-outgoing and bouncy personality would make her a good fit for the role.  However, I had to get reassurance from Amy Proctor, my colleague who assisted with our auditions, that Allison wouldn’t mind my casting her as Cerberus.  She did joke about being offended, but she approached the role with loads of enthusiasm and stayed in character every moment of every practice and performance.  I didn’t see nearly as much of her after we finished the play, but I always got the warmest of greetings when I did – and when the THS Student Council sponsored a “write a note to a teacher” campaign for students to do something to encourage and thank teachers of their choice, one of the notes that I received was from Allison.  (She also probably doesn’t have any idea how much that note meant to me, but that’s also true.)  When I heard that Kori had a passenger with her, I thought that it was probably Allison – I doubted that it would have been Kimmie OR Kattie without both being with her – and I was right.  She was also on the four-wheeler with Kimmie. . . I’m so thankful that she hasn’t been seriously hurt either time.
 
The thing about these girls. . . they love with their whole hearts.  If you’re in with them, you’re IN – and there’s no hypocrisy about how they act toward you.  And the girls in their “squad”. . . they aren’t just friends.  They’re family.  You see lots of high school friends that you know will do well to stay in touch beyond the first year out of high school, who are more acquaintances than anything else, whose connection with one another is incredibly superficial.  These girls will probably be sharing suites at a retirement home sixty years from now. . . they couldn’t be closer if they were blood relatives.  (OK, I know that Kimmie and Kattie are blood relatives, but you get my point.)  Losing Kori isn’t losing a friend for them. . . it’s losing a sister.  I know that from hearing them talk to and about each other, from witnessing how they act with each other.  (Once or twice, those pop-in visits came after school with Kori in tow.  I don’t think I actually met her, though. . . I now wish I had.)

I keep thinking about Kori’s mother, who has lost her only child.  Mariah may not be my only child, but I have to admit that I’ve hugged her a little bit tighter over the past couple of days.   I also think about Kori’s teachers, who are going through having lost one of their “kids”. . . I honestly do know how that feels.  Mostly, though, my thoughts keep going back to Kattie, Kimmie, and Allison and what they’re going through.  I love them, and I’m hurting desperately for them. 

Kori’s life imagined. . . well, it was nothing like this.  She was about to start her last year of high school, and the girls were making plans for the future.  Nobody expected that future to be cut short in the intersection of Old Milledgeville Road and Georgia Highway 17 last Friday afternoon.  That’s not the way her story – or their story – was supposed to go.  And although there are a million platitudes that a person can throw out at a time like this, those are all appeals to the head.  Nothing can fix a broken heart. . . and even though the pain won’t always be as fresh as it is right now, the parts of their hearts that belong to Kori will never heal completely.  That’s what happens when you love big-time.

So to Kattie, Kimmie, and Allison. . . I’ve already let you all know this, but I’m so, so sorry.  And next year, when you least expect it, something is going to happen to bring you right back to the way you’re feeling right now. . . and it will happen more than once.  Sometimes, in those moments, you’re going to want to cling to each other in the grief that you’re sharing.  At others, though, you’re going to need for it to be all about you. . . and you’re going to need to talk to someone else.  When that happens, know that I’ll be there to listen if you need me.  I love all three of you very much.

I don’t know if you all knew that before now. . . but it’s true.