I have been thinking about death this week, and I was even before the student paper had a full page article on Thursday about the death of a former student whom I had had in my class. This was not the first student I have taught who has died. After all, I am finishing up my 23rd year here, and I have taught several thousand people in my career. The first one I knew about was a major, who had for a time been my advisee, and it was startling, but not completely unexpected. She had taken several years longer than normal to complete her degree, having taken time out for unspecified medical concerns. I was always happy to see her when she returned, but I knew that she had some serious health issues, and her death was therefore not shocking. I found out about her almost a year after she had passed away, and the letter I wrote to her mother (I think, but it was so long ago I can no longer be sure) was thus very brief. I didn't want to upset her, but I did want to let her know that I had known and liked her daughter, and was sorry to know that she was gone.
But this student's death written about this past week was a bit different. He had been in a large class with me just three years ago. He was one of almost 200 I taught that year and had been a science major, taking my class for a distribution requirement. His name didn't jump out at me but the picture that accompanied the article did. I remembered him quite vividly. He was cheerful and over the course of the next year, as I walked across campus or to the parking lot past his agriculture fraternity house, he would always say hello, smile, offer me some kettle corn (they sold it for fundraising on the quad, and still do several times a year), and generally was the sort of student I enjoy having in class and enjoy seeing around campus. He had graduated a year or two ago and I hadn't seen him around recently. That is what happens at an undergraduate university in a small town. Students graduate and the vast majority of them leave, only occasionally returning to see
The paper didn't report the cause of death and it was not relevant to the fund-raiser the fraternity is doing to help his family with expenses and to make a contribution to those in his fraternity who are having financial difficulties, essentially making a contribution in his name to his "brothers." I can only imagine how much he is missed by those who knew him better than I did.
It seems that the number of "Sympathy Notice" emails we have been getting this semester is higher than normal. I am quite sure this is not the real situation, but the reason I feel that way is because I have not been as familiar with the people who are dying as I have been before. After all, in 23 years I have met a lot of people and when I began (in my late 20s) almost everyone was older than I was. I have been to several funerals for older colleagues, but not on anything like a yearly basis. But I can see that will change sometime soon. It has gotten to one at least every two years, and I have stocked up on nice blank cards for sympathy notes. I don't know if it helps anyone to get a letter from a person whom they have never met, but I want to do something to commemorate the passing of someone I had known. Or acknowledge the person who has died, in the case of the death of a parent of a colleague, and writing a note allows me to do that.
Students have a life separate from their college life, in a world that I do not share. In their world their parents are splitting apartor have lost their jobs. Their brothers are hit and killed by drunk drivers. Their mothers have cancer or they do. They are from blended or from broken families. None of this do I know most of the time. And that is probably the right thing. After all, my task is to teach them knowledge and skills, not to provide grief counseling. Unlike with faculty and staff we don't automatically get informed by human resources if someone has died in a student's family.
But it is important for me to keep up with what has happened in students' lives because of how it interferes with their ability to handle my class and its assignments. And also it is important for them to figure out what they will need in such stressful circumstances. In early years of my time at college, a friend told the story of how her father had died just before finals week of her freshman year, and her major professor told her, when she asked for an extension on the final exam, that she should go ahead and take it. That way she wouldn't have it hanging over her head when she went home. And it shocked her, but when she did it, she understood that it had helped her to get through the week better than she would have if she had left campus immediately when she had gotten the news. She was one of three people I knew whose father had died during my four years of undergraduate study. And my undergrad class was only just over 300 students. So if I translate that to a class which has five times that number, there will certainly be parental deaths during their four years at my institution.
And there are students here who will die in their four years, or shortly after they graduate. It shouldn't surprise me, but it does. They are young, so young. We have very few non-traditional students here, and if someone dies between 18 and 22, that person is certainly too long. In my 23 years I have known of students being killed by cars or surviving horrible accidents with long-term physical disabilities as well as brain damage. There have been students who have committed suicide and died when on a study abroad program (from natural causes). There are others who have had severe mental problems develop, or have been expelled from university for committing crimes.
But the fact that some of the students have died in their teens or twenties is a very difficult thing for me to deal with. When I was in my early 20s I was trying to develop my personality, and to cope with what that meant. If my life had been cut off then I would never have been able to reach the stability and general happiness that I have managed to reach. My colleagues who have died have at least reached some of those achievements. But a student who dies at age 20 or 21 is prevented from becoming what he or she will be. And therefore it is even more upsetting than the death of an adult in his or her 50s or 60s, or even 40s. Unless you know that 50- or 60-year old.
Death is such a complete break with this world. I hope that the student whose life is commemorated in the student paper from this past Thursday is remembered long by his family. I think I will remember him for quite a while, even though I hadn't seen him in a year or more. Goodbye, young man.