Musings over teen deaths

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

We live in Upper Urbia. A little removed from Sub Urbia. It’s a place full of soccer moms and part time dads. Most of moms and dads here are doing their best to parent. I’ve come to grips with the fact that, no matter what you do, your child could be next. 

Death is not a happy thing, on a good day. But like the old Baptist preacher says, in the case of an old person’s death … there’s some grandeur there. Some sense of majesty, of a live well lived and loved.

These kids’ deaths … well … I just … cant ‘splain it. It wrenches my gut, it makes me sick…

Over the years we’ve lost probably 20 in this area. I know, not a statistically large amount considering that within a 3 mile radius we have two huge high schools and a Junior College.

Some suicides, most car wrecks, one or two overdoses. The first which touched me was a friend of my daughter who died in a freak wreck when her cousin (driving) spun out on gravel and Meghan was thrown out of the car.

That was the horriblest funeral I’ve ever been to. The girl was a cheerleader and all the other cheerleaders were there. Not to take away from their grief, but all that shrilling and screaming … gah.

Last year a young girl was killed and another maimed in a boat wreck. Threadhere might be a sucky link. Sowwy.

A friend of my older son was killed in a wreck, just this time last year. The boys had no excuse, drunk driving, hit a tree.

Last Friday this same boy’s younger brother died of an overdose. About the time I heard about it, my younger son was driving in … I says did you hear about Mason? He’s like,… did you hear about Callie?

His friend Callie was killed in a wreck the same nite. She was riding in a car with 5 other people and was thrown out of the car on impact. If she had been wearing her seat belt , she might have lived.

My son told me . … one of those things, if you believe it I want to believe it … people who went to her funeral in McComb say … her family let balloons go … after the balloons reached the sky, seven rainbows appeared…

Callie had said before, if she had the chance, she’d paint the sky for her friends.

I guess she did.
Hug your babies, people.

2

My next door neighbor’s 20-year old son died a couple weeks ago. Felt flu-ish on Friday and went to bed at 7pm. By Saturday noon he was in ICU in a coma from viral meningitis and he died Sunday before dawn.

A good student & athlete, the boy was in peak health before Friday. I’d often commented to my wife what it’d be like to be that young & vigorous & full of life & potential again.

Now I’m still here and he’s gone.

His father is an OB/GYN & his mother an RN. They’re tearing themselves apart with “I shoulda known better” thoughts. I think they’ll get past that part eventually, but the hole in their life won’t go away for a long, long time. Sure, the kid was going to graduate college & move out of the house in a year oor two. But leaving home & leaving Earth are two very different things.

Life is fragile; remember to eat dessert physically or emotionally every day.

3

Ugh, there was just an accident near us in which five kids were riding in a car and crashed. There was no drinking or drugs involved and all were wearing their seatbelts. It was a dark, winding, dirt road and the driver was simply going too fast and was inexperienced. A tree stopped them from taking a 30 foot drop into a marsh.

The driver had had his license for a month. In Mass, it’s not legal to have other kids in your car within 6 months of getting your license, unless they are related or you have someone 21 or older in the passenger’s seat.

Two of the kids essentially walked away (driver and the kid sitting directly behind them.) The other three are all in critical condition, one is on life support and IF she makes it, will probably have extensive and permanent damage. She is 15 years old. All five go to school with my kids and my daughter works with the mother of the 15 year old.

I’ve told my kids a thousand times, you don’t get in the car with someone who is inexperienced, drinking or doing drugs or someone you don’t know. Once you’re in that back seat you have NO CONTROL over what that driver does. You can shout “slow down” a hundred times and it may not help. My oldest is having a really difficult time with this and I have nothing that makes it better. She’s nearly 18 and it’s freaking her out how “young” these kids are. I’ve got another two kids behind her and I just hope that they listen and “don’t care if someone says I drive like an old lady. At least I’m in control.” Yep, I’m hugging them all just a little tighter today.

4

It’s strange when I compare my life thus far (I’m 28, btw) to most of my friends because most of them have only known maybe one or two people from their past that have since died. When I thought about, I can think of eleven friends or acquaintances that I knew from my hometown that are now dead. And when I think back on them all, it’s really awful - three murders (including one girl that, from what I hear, was found slaughtered in a hotel room in San Francisco or LA), several suicides, car accidents, motorcycle accidents … you wouldn’t believe how many times I think of something fun or interesting that happened in the past only to have the thought followed by “oh, she’s dead now.”

From what I understand, for a short period, my hometown (Geneseo, IL in case you are interested) had the highest suicide rate per capita of any town in the USA (due to a rash of teenage suicides) and was once told that it was profiled on 60 Minutes. I have been unable to find any information about this, though. I do remember being a child of about 5 or 6, playing with a friend in his yard, when we heard the gunshot of a man who shot himself two doors down. We only found this out because my friend’s mom was a nurse at the local hospital.

5

My brother was for years big-time into the drug scene. As I grew up, I saw firsthand how the life you lead will catch up to you.

One friend couldn’t take addiction anymore, so he shot himself while driving. When the paramedics got there, they thought it was the crash that killed him until they pried the door open and found the rifle.

One friend was high and drove right into the back of a delivery truck and died.

Another friend, one I was especially close to (this one broke my heart), he’d been clean for months or at least everyone thought he was clean. He was supposed to stay home and watch his infant daughter but when his wife got home from work she found him passed out on the couch. She was pissed off so she took the baby and went to spend the night at a friend’s house. The next day he didn’t come in for work so a co-worker dropped by the house and found him still laying on the couch, dead as a doornail. He had OD’d in his sleep.

6

When I was a freshman in high school, three of the most popular seniors were killed in a car wreck about a mile from my house. All three were jocks on both the football and basketball teams. Our school lost every game after they died, and the entire high school was in shock from their deaths for months afterwards. This was long before such a thing as grief counselors.

About a year later, the homecoming queen and her date were both killed in a car crash.

When my brother was about 10, his best friend fell into the Illinois River and drowned. He couldn’t swim, but stupidly tried to jump from the bank of the river onto a rock about three feet away from the river bank. He slipped.

It is hard enough to cope with the death of a parent, but I can only imagine the horror of a death of your own child.

7

This stuff depresses me more and more as I get older, and I’m only 23. I had to cover a story about a high school kid who died during dental surgery a while ago, and although I hardly found out a thing about him, it was hard to shake. More recently I wrote about a girl who, at age 15, was badly hurt in a car wreck with a friend. The friend was trying to get somewhere in time to catch a bus after a soccer practice and crashed while going 90 miles an hour. She suffered a traumatic brain injury, and ten years later, she’s low functioning- she doesn’t speak and is fed through a tube. The girl doesn’t live with her family any more, of course, and her mother said ‘she’s allowed to stay with us overnight’ like it was a major privilege.

Almost three years ago, four counselors at my little brother’s summer camp died by drowning in a rain-swollen river. They were off from camp that day, and I think one of them fell in and the others tried to save him. They were all experienced swimmers, but the rapids were too strong. When the water churns like that, apparently you can’t even float to the surface. One of the kids was actually a Northwestern student. I met him once, briefly. And my little brother did have one of them as a counselor, so it wasn’t a sad thing that happened to somebody else for him. That was awful, and while he’s coping with the immediate aftermath of it, he’s hundreds of miles away from us. And to make matters worse, the huge blackout of 2003 happened a few days later, so for a while we couldn’t talk to him about it either. They’ve got trees planted at the center of the camp site for those four kids now; I saw them for the first time last summer. Dammit, I’m choking up over this right now. I don’t know why this hits me harder these days.

8

I know the feeling- there’s been three deaths at my high school (a relatively small school, only 1200 students) in the last year. One was a severe seizure while sleeping and the other two were drunk car crashes. One in particular sticks out in my mind- the two kids in the car were drunk and running from the police with a suspended driver’s license. After a high speed chase, the kids ran a red light and smashed into a car, killing the drunk teen and the other driver, a father of two. Two weeks later a group of the teen’s friends came up for the funeral, got drunk, help up a 7-11, and crashed their car trying to drive away (no one severely hurt, thank god).

The other death was graduation night. A girl was driving to the school-sponsored all night party (the one the whole town puts on just to keep kids off the streets that night) when she was killed by a drunk teen who pulled out from the shoulder as a cop approached his car.

It’s not quite the same thing, but I was involved two years ago in a group of students who turned in a friend for carrying weapons on campus and talking about school shootings. (By “weapons” I mean a dozen knives, throwing stars made in the school metal shop, road flares, WD-40 cans rigged to explode, a mace-and-chain, all kinds of things.) It’s a weird world out there.

9

When I was in 9th grade, a couple of senior girls were killed in a car accident. They weren’t drunk, but they were speeding and driving recklessly. I didn’t know them, but I remember how suddenly everyone acted like they were best friends with the dead girls and made much melodrama over it. Yes, it was sad, but it was like everyone wanted in on it. Creepy.

I transferred to a small private school for the next three years. Right after graduation, one of the boys who was two years behind us died in a wreck just after getting his license. Later that summer, another boy was shot by the police while he was apparently high on something. Those two boys were the first two kids in the class, alphabetically. Both had the last name “Allen”. The girl who was #3 was pretty damn nervous for awhile.

I went to my high school reunion in 2004. They had a slideshow going with a bunch of old pictures, and a slide came up showing the guy I went to prom with, who I realized wasn’t at the reunion. I was standing with a group of old friends and I said, “Hey, where IS Nathan?” Everyone turned to look at me like I was nuts and finally someone told me he died in a nasty car wreck in 2002. I had no idea!

Life is extra fragile, and cars are big metal death machines.

10

We had the usual car crashes at my high school–two kids killed in my freshman year when they went through an intersection while a dump truck was also going through it, a girl who lived down the street from me killed when the girl driving her car took winding country roads a bit too fast and met up with a tree. There was also my sister’s schoolmate who argued with his father, then killed himself by stealing a car and crashing it.

Many of these dead kids were commemorated in the yearbooks. One thing that sticks in my mind, however, is the death of a student who had cerebral palsy. He had a lot of other physical ailments and he eventually died. The principal got on the intercom to announce his death and to ask us to have a “moment of silence” for him. So for a few seconds we were quiet, even if we didn’t know this guy.

Then the kid behind me started singing “Another One Bites the Dust.”

11

Out of all the deaths of friends and family I’ve dealt with, I think the worst one was that of a friend who died at the age of eighteen. Smart guy, had it all together, y’all know the type. He was on spring break during his freshman year in college, got drunk for the first time ever and dived off a third floor balcony into a swimming pool. He made it the first time, but the second time he missed and broke his neck on the cement surrounding the pool. The guy did his first and only dumbass thing and died from it. Like several others have said, life is a fragile thing.

12

The kid who sang “Another One Bites the Dust” had tried to save someone’s life a few weeks earlier. He’d been driving and he saw a motorcyclist who hollered “Hey Baby!” at a woman. Unfortunately in doing this the motorcyclist lost control of his bike and crashed into a telephone pole. This kid called an ambulance and sat by the man saying “Don’t die, don’t die.”

The man died.

13

I didn’t know that John Deacon actually did the vocals for “Another One Bites the Dust” or that it had anything to do with a motorcycle accident.

14

He means the kid who sang it in post #10, not anyone from Queen.

15

Same here -two 16-year olds killed in a high speed crash. Unfotunately, teenagers will continue to think they are immortal. Both kids were not wearing seat belts. Tragic waste of life-maybe the thing to do is raise the driving age?

16

Why is it that this discussion topic never goes towards “maybe we should reduce our dependency on cars”? American teenagers drive because they need to drive. How else do you go anywhere in a typical American suburb?

17

American teenagers drive because they CAN, not because they necessarily need to. Cars give an illusion of freedom and independence, even if the reality is difference. Before you can drive, you have to rely on parents or older friends or siblings to drive you around. It’s inevitable that some kids won’t take the danger seriously. I’m all for driver education and safety courses, and I’m sure they help a lot of people, but some people have to learn the hard way. Sometimes the hard way kills them, but that’s the way it goes.

As for drunk drivers, I think DUI ought to be prosecuted as attempted mass murder (because if you get behind the wheel and you’ve been drinking, you obviously don’t care whether you plow into a bus full of nuns and orphans), and you do ten years in state prison for your first offense and lose your license for life.

18

Well…some American teenagers drive because they work. I was lucky (heh) enough to live in a very, very small town and live close enough to walk to my job. I got one of the few jobs in town that were available to teens (I was the lone afterschool pharmacy cashier), but most kids, my brother and sister included, drove to the next town over or a few exits down the interstate to work at a fast-food joint or somesuch. Working was necessary in my family, and getting a ride from my parents every day was out of the question–they worked too…

…for the State Highway Patrol. So they were very familiar with the dangers of teen driving. We had safe driving drilled into us through hours upon hours of supervised driving and strict rules. I wasn’t let on the road alone until they were positive that I could concentrate on driving safely and that I was used to the feel of it.

I did learn a lot from them. For instance, there is no excuse, ever, to drive drunk. I think penalities should be harsher, for certain. People know that it’s just a slap on the wrist–I’ve known plenty of people who have been arrested for DUI and it’s just not that big a deal. (YMMV, I don’t know all the individual state laws.)

Heavy penalties don’t get through to everyone, and quality driving education doesn’t get through to everyone either, but a combination of the two would certainly get through to more people.

19

The worst day of school I can remember was right after the weekend, last year, when 2 extremely well liked and, I suppose, “popular”, students were killed in a wreck. No drinking, or drugs, but neither was wearing their seatbelt, when the too-fast-for-the-turn car met with a “Willowbend” neighborhood sign. The driver, and another passenger belted in, walked away relatively unhurt, atleast physically. Oddly enough, the last three letters came off the brick sign, spelling “End” in the grass.

But, the school day - that was heartbreaking. In a school of 1400, walking to and from class, all day, after a weekend where people had a chance to dwell on it, absolutely no one talked. No one. Just silence, down every corridor. You didn’t even feel up to looking at each other, not even enough to acknowledge anothers presence, and least of all to acknowledge life.

It was so silent, and sullen, and hollow that by the end of the day, if you didn’t know them before, you knew more about them than you could have ever done when they were alive.

The funeral, of the one that was my old friend from grade school (I didn’t go to the other, as I didn’t know her), was actually rather inspiring. The wake was held at a rather large funeral home, and the line was wrapped throughout all the halls of the the interior, and all the way around the building on all four sides. There were about 4 parking lots from neighboring businesses filled with cars, along with cars all up and down the road.

It took a little over an hour to get through the line, and I was one of the first there.

Now, the funeral was even more uplifting. You had to miss school for it, so not all went, but a lot of people did. There were two parking lots and a field filled with cars, and the precession itself I’m sure was nearly half a mile long.

Finally, the saddest part of all is that an article was released that weekend, by I think US Today, that detailed the most common way for teenagers to die in a car wreck. SUV, going too fast, with a male driver, without seatbelt, losing control.

Our tragedy was not only preventable, and needless, but a rather common occurance throughout America.

20

I wonder this, too. It’s more tragic when a teen dies in a car wreck, and all the more likely because teens are often reckless and don’t realize how dangerous driving really is (I should know, I’m 20 years old, and I finally got it maybe a year ago). But lots of other people are killed in car accidents, too, and no thought, or not much, is given to the idea that maybe, possibly, cars are too dangerous to expect that lots of people won’t be killed as a result of driving them.

I actually agree with cbawlmer though in that teens THINK they need to drive. Sort of depends upon what you mean by “need,” though, right? If I wanted to spend much time with my friends, once we could drive, I needed to be able to drive out to spend time with them (we lived/live in different towns in about a 12 mile circle). Or, I could get a ride, which I did do sometimes, but which was a lot less convenient for everyone.

These days, I don’t like cars much, even though my high school friends are mostly in college and spread out all over the region and even the country. There are a number of reasons for this, with the danger of driving being just one of them. No one in my high school died in a car - good thing, too, that school has 360 students. It would have been devastating. There were a few close calls, though, and I personally got a ride a couple times with a fellow student who was a terrifyingly fast, dangerous driver. I hated it then, and I’m even more frightened looking back on it - this kid could have killed me. He nearly killed himself, in two wrecks in a year and a half. There was a kid that I knew from elementary school who died in the 9th grade on his snowmobile. There was a big fuss about whether the driver of the snowplow that he hit had been drinking, and whether the parents would sue. Turned out that the driver had not been drinking, and that this kid had been going in excess of 60 mph (perhaps as much as 80) in a snow storm on a public road, with low visibility. There were no charges. I wasn’t impressed with the anger - the kid drove like an idiot, and died because of it. The whole thing was an enormous tragedy, and I said as much; but when I suggested that it was his own fault, well, then I was a bastard for “speaking ill of the dead.” But I don’t know, maybe some fault lies with the parents for letting their kid use a vehicle that he clearly didn’t operate responsibly? I can’t tell, it might be that they didn’t know he rode too fast unsuitable conditions.

I don’t really know what I’m getting at, except to say that a lot of this is preventable, and not necessarily by sterner driver’s education. There will always be stupidly reckless kids, and some of them will die, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept their deaths as a fact of life. It’s tragic, and we should do something about it. By raising the driving age? Getting rid of cars? I dunno, but I do think that the issue should be discussed intelligently, rather than the constant repetition of “oh, what a shame… he was a nice kid, it shouldn’t have happened,etc.” Well, of course it shouldn’t have happened, but what now?