She was thirteen and it all happened so suddenly. I remember
one Monday morning staggering — still blue and bleary-eyed — into
my urban comp., frantically scanning the notice-board for bits
of information vaguely relevant to my professional survival or
vaguely in the interest of my tutees.
And there it was . . . like a solitary cabbage flourishing amid
weeds in the grounds of a deserted house . . . there, superimposed
on a special offer to teachers of cut-price cassettes, a union
announcement of impending action, a reminder about fire-drill
procedures and the duty-list for the day . . . there, in the middle
of life, were simple words in blue-black ink penned on a single
sheet of unlined paper: there had been a road accident on Friday
afternoon; she hadn’t regained consciousness; she was unlikely
to survive; the family would be in touch; it wasn’t the driver’s
fault; some of the pupils knew.
There was something terribly real and normal about that dramatic
lack of drama, treating it like an ordinary fact of everyday life,
another one of those pastoral open secrets which supposedly sensitize
teachers to their pupils; like who suffers from constipation and
whose Dad has just left home. Of course, we’re not to let on that
we know about the accident: we’re just to know and to take it
into account. I’ve often doubted the wisdom of that subtle, all-pervasive
kind of communal care.
By the following morning, the single sheet of unlined paper had
disappeared, replaced by another with more final words in the
same blue-black hand. The news was to be broken to pupils by their
tutors and a formal announcement would be made in assembly later
in the week. I envisaged an army of apostles carrying a common
message to far corners from a central source. There were undoubtedly
senior staff who felt that communicating such knowledge would
not be conducive to the quiet, reflective mood one wanted to cultivate
for a daily act of collective worship; that, at worst, it might
induce some form of mass hysteria or corporate gasping; and was,
at the very least, in poor taste. I acknowledge the incongruity
and the vulgarity of an obituary notice sandwiched between the
sports results and the room changes, but I questioned the motive:
who was protecting whom, I wondered. For all our qualifications
and years of service, we remain human beings and our humanity
emerges at the death of youth as at no other time. Now was the
moment given to face it, to embrace it — not to run away . . .
Everyone needs an escape hatch but an escape can imprison you
if it steals your chance to release your feelings and encounter
yourself.
I had anticipated that it would not mean a great deal to my group:
they were two or three years her senior and, as far as I was aware,
none of them knew her personally. But perhaps the death of another
human being suggested their own mortality . . . no matter how
impersonal the school community, perhaps the loss of one of its
members makes other members feel smaller . . . perhaps they identified:
at other times a 13-year-old would be a mere bopper but now their
vulnerability was stirred . . . or perhaps they had caught something
of my mood and were sharing wordlessly in my inarticulate grief.
At any rate they were noticeably moved and, for the most part,
distressed and disturbed. They were certainly very nice to each
other, petty differences disappeared and a spirit of harmony reigned
in the room — as though part of showing respect for the dead;
a cruel death demands kindness from us all. In the days that followed
there was to be a great deal of searching behaviour — some aimless
wandering, fidgeting and rooting around but also the profound
and probing questions.
Burying behaviour was displayed at morning break. A timid, self-effacing
knock at the staff-room door revealed some of her closest friends
bearing armfuls of her books and files. They thought they should
clean out her locker and dispose of her belongings. “Good heavens!
Whatever’s the matter with you? Some of us in here are very upset.
She only died yesterday . . .“ The door was closed. Some adults
are very frightened and frightening.
I was glad that a moment presented itself later in the day to
give her something of a decent burial: I was also conscious of
having to inter my own anger at the insensitivity and inadequacy
of a colleague. They were right — she was a ‘horrible old cow’
— and I hated myself for trying to explain and justify her attitude:
“people sometimes mourn in very funny ways . . .“ It was much,
much later that I was forced to recognise my anger at death itself
that takes from us our little, lovely ones and leaves us with
horrible old cows. There was a great deal to be done . . . some
of the books had the school name stamped on them and they could
be checked off and returned to stock. They were easy; but there
were things that belonged only half to her, like exercise books
and gym kit: it was decided that these should be offered to her
family. Discussion followed as to how they should reach them.
No, not just through the post . . . and her parents shouldn’t
have to come and collect them . No. They had to be accompanied:
two girls were chosen to take those things to her house and to
bear the family some token of their sympathy. That way they would
be able to say how sorry they were and how much they missed her.
Then there were strange little bits that were of no cultural or
commercial value and weren’t even particularly reminiscent of
her . . . a pencil that needed sharpening, half a packet of sweets,
a bus ticket . . . Agreement was reached that they could not simply
be thrown away; they weren’t rubbish; they must be shared and
I was awarded a pencil for her memory. It was a very close time
and I have often reflected that of all the situations that bond
teachers and pupils bereavement is the one that most resembles
glue.
It was not till the next day that her class and I had a lesson
together and the room was filled with an empty seat; not that
there are serried ranks and allocated places but there was definitely
one chair too many. I spoke to them of this and also of the hole
in my heart. I no longer cared for propriety and upper lips, stiff
or otherwise. We write too much about caring community and the
kingdom of God on earth and we usher them in too little. People
must be; and other people must be in letting them be; if the captain
of the football team wants to break down and cry, then he must;
and if the Vicar’s daughter wants to say that she rejects God,
then she must. And we must stand there. And when he says he feels
better now and he’s got over it and when she says she’s different
now and she really believes, we must stand there, too. And if
my voice breaks as I speak to them and if I take on a watery look,
so be it; I could certainly not adopt a business as usual approach
with openers like “Last time, we were looking at . . . reading
about discussing . . .“ Ironically, ‘last time’ was a Friday afternoon
and we’d all been together as we chorused “Have a good weekend!”
Several wondered whether she had known; she had seemed especially
happy that afternoon. I confessed that I hadn’t noticed at the
time but then I am pretty obtuse; now that they mention it, yes,
there was a certain serenity and a special kind of radiance. We
were grateful for that. If I were a good R.E. teacher, I’d have
really capitalised on that lesson. I could have got away with
a lot of didactic stuff about funeral practices and beliefs about
the afterlife in the major world faiths; I could have done some
simplified philosophy of religion; I could have shown one of those
meaningful filmstrips. The objective study of religion has its
place and I’m one of its most ardent fans but it doesn’t belong
here; now is not the time for ‘Christians believe . . . when a
Hindu dies . . . if God is good, then why . . .‘ Openness is needed,
yes, but no open-endedness. It was difficult for all of us especially
those, like myself, who are mature enough to know that death is
real but not mature enough to deal with its reality; and even
more trying for teenagers, when most relationships are tenuous
and constantly being tested. Some hadn’t really wanted to talk
about it — it was too threatening — but then they hadn’t wanted
to stop. I was very glad that we had already ‘done’ death together
some weeks before and we were enriched by remembering what she
had voiced then. That helped us to explore and express our thoughts
and feelings now; you have to be strong to be weak; and if that
isn’t religious and educational, I don’t know what is . . .
evitable, of course, that I would be involved — whether I wanted
to be or not — in the school’s formal ceremony. It was a non-denominational
institution and chaplaincy was not part of my job description:
I was the neutral purveyor of humanity’s experience of the ultimate.
Despite all that, R.E. teachers are the problem persons and on
this occasion it became a department to deal with the dying. I
had to come to terms with this role. It occurred to me that it
matters not who the undertaker is as long as the dead are not
left unburied. There was definitely a need for a ritual which
could act as a focus for grief and which could counter the avoidance
of most teachers. The Head had very firm views: it must not on
any account be an emotional affair; there should be appropriate
New Testament readings; perhaps some poetry — George Herbert had
the right approach; it was to take place during a lunch hour so
as not to disrupt normal school life; it should happen on the
same day as the funeral as it wouldn’t be a good idea for pupils
to go to both. I was to make it happen . . . but please, no eulogy
I summoned the holy society of friends: they had very different
ideas. That wouldn’t be about her. Her parents were atheists and
she was definitely a don’t know: she’d hate New Testament readings
and anyway who was George Herbert? Psalm 23 would be all right;
she used to hum “Crimond” sometimes. Yes, the Ecclesiastes bit
would have been her line and there was that lovely tune for it.
And what abut the death prayer that doesn’t mention death; she
had thought that was amazing. There had to be something funny
or stupid — and why was no one to say something about her? They
wanted to speak (actually they wanted to scream).
It wasn’t what you might call a satisfying experience: possibly
it wasn’t meant to be; possibly it was unfair to hope that it
might be. But it did happen — despite the compromises and the
bowing to authority, and readings were read and songs were sung.
The empty seat was still vacant and some of us remarked that there
was nobody in it. . . no body. There had been no slick cliches
and no glib responses but we had nevertheless been dirtied by
death.
When I next needed a class list from the office, I noted that
they had not been reprinted. Rather, her name had been merely
crossed out in red: by a conclusive, bureaucratic stroke this
pupil had been pronounced clinically off-roll. I grew up that
day; I also aged. Every child on the road is her and I became
an extremely careful driver. I think it’s called learning by discovery.
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