I left my small hometown when I was 16, in the middle of my Junior year. I found out recently that 9 of my classmates were killed in various traffic accidents throughout the following ten years.
The only one I heard about at the time it happened, was the brother of a friend. His car was hit by a train while crossing the tracks.
My sister had a friend, that moved away when they were both 13. One night, the friend had slipped out of the house to swim in her neighbor’s swimming pool. But, the neighbors had gone on vacation and drained the pool. She jumped off the diving board.
Despite living in a small town and going to a small school, when had a lot of deaths. I remember at least 5 suicides and 4 car accident related deaths, as well as a teacher who died of cancer.
The one that hit me the hardest was when I was in 10th grade there was a slightly annoying, very unpopular boy who I sat next to. I was nice to him and he developed a huge crush on me. I got annoyed and freaked out (as teenagers do) and moved across the room to sit next to some other friends of mine, and away from him.
A couple of weeks later, I had stayed home sick, and my sisters came home from school and told me that he taken a gun to his head had killed himself. I know that he must have had other issues besides getting spurned by a girl, but I blamed myself anyway.
All the twins stories hit me hard. I am not a twin, but a triplet. The thought of one of my sisters dying sends me into a panic. I can’t imagine surviving them.
After reading all this, it seems amazing that I managed to grow up in a small country town and never had anyone I knew die that was not elderly. However, I’ve been teaching in a small school for about 13 years, and have had two students die from suicide, one in a car wreck, one from an asthma attack, and one that probably will be passing within the month from cancer.
A few years ago the kids at my church youth group went on a retreat. I was in college and a few years older, but still knew most of them. James turned 18 while they were there, and when everyone noticed no one had seen him after the last “free time” they found him hanging by his belt in a tree. The worst part is that his mom tried (but ultimately failed) to sue the church, the adults that were there, and the police officers who responded. She said it wasn’t suicide and everyone was covering up that it was either a prank that went wrong or a hate crime, because he was black and everyone else who was there (and the majority of the church) was white. She also accused his friends of faking letters he wrote and lying about conversations they had with him that could be evidence of him being depressed.
Andrew was a good friend of my son - used to catch the same lift to school together, spoke about starting a law practice together, played cricket together. They used to love going to cricket matches and trying to get signatures from the star players.
When they were 11, Andrew had a fit at school one day. Turned out he had a brain tumour brought on by the start of adolescence, and a slow deterioration started.
Andrew kept going to school as much as he could, and he stayed optimistic, consistent with his overall personality. He went to football games at the school. One day, he was proud as punch that the First XV had him lead them onto the field in his wheelchair. He said afterwards that his school’s team must have been really frightened of the other team, because they were all crying…
When he died (at 12), my son and his friends didn’t know what to do to mark his memory. So they got together and got a copy of the order of service from his funeral, and arranged for the Australian cricket team to sign it, to represent all the signatures that Andrew would never get a chance to collect. They gave it to his parents. I was so proud of the boys for thinking of that, and making it happen. And grateful to the team as well.
We lost track of the family shortly after that. The father went into a very dark place, and the parents separated. The mother remarried. I liked them a lot, but I guess that watching Andrew’s contemporaries grow up and live life was too much for them.