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2004-04-06 - 4:40 p.m.

UNWANTED PRACTICE

Last Saturday, I went to the Torah Explorers� service at the synagogue, which our education director aptly titled �Wiggly Shabbat.� The Torah Explorers are the first and second graders in the class where Kat is a teacher�s aide for an autistic child. The service was lovely, with each child reading something he or she wrote that related to the prayer that followed. A luncheon followed. I helped serve the food and ended up sitting next to J., a small, solemn boy in a bright green shirt.

�We have no school next week,� he told me. �Because of vacation. But we had a day off a while ago because a teacher at our school got really sick and died.�

�I read about your teacher in the newspaper,� I responded.

�In the newspaper?� he asked incredulously. �It was so bad that they put it in the newspaper.�

�No, not really,� I said. �Her death was very sad. Newspapers often talk about very sad things. But they could have done a little story if it was only about the sad part. They did a long story because they wanted everyone to know what wonderful things she did for kids. Sometimes death is about remembering the good things too.�

He gave me a big smile and ran off to join a game of tag on the other side of the social hall. �You are very good at talking with kids about death,� remarked his dad.

Well, I don�t really want to be as good at talking with kids about death as I am. Like any skill, talking about death is mainly about practice although an aptitude to look life straight in the eye helps. This morning I remembered just where I got all of the practice---and I had more.

Poor Day-Hay! That child has seen a lot of death. Unfortunately, it has not been the type of death where older people get sick and gradually slip away. That type of death, while sad, is easily explained as a part of the circle of life: we are born, we grow older, and we die. Most of the death Day-Hay has seen has been sudden and of young people: death by fire, by heart attack, and by suicide. She has just started talking about her uncle�s death this past summer and assimilating that experience and here we go again.

As I do every morning, I went out and got the newspaper as Day-Hay was eating her breakfast. Normally, she grabs the comics, which serves my purposes because I am not very together in the morning and a reading child is not a talking child. This morning we noted something. There was a story about an older teenager she knew and how he used a gun to end his life.

E. was a sweet kid who appeared to have everything going for him. He was a taekwondo star, a teenager who was good with younger teenagers and who worked hard. He had the looks to be a model. But he also was a perfectionist and apparently he could never forgive himself for not being perfect. When the US Olympic team decided not to send any featherweights to the 2004 Olympics, he decided that he had failed his parents because taekwondo is not cheap and he believed that they had sacrificed so much.

Or something like that. Who knows what people really think when they despair so deeply that life is no longer living? I don�t have the answers. I have long suspected that if I were told to I had to take my emotions and choose between suicide and homicide, I�d be homicidal.

And I had few answers for Day-Hay this time either but then, she had few questions. We talked, but mainly I knew that what she needed was some matter-of-fact help maintaining routine. So I hugged her, I helped her straighten her room, and I waited with her for the bus.

I got more practice talking about death with children and not talking about death with children.

But I think I have more than enough practice now.

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