In each instance, I have organized the funerals, sometimes the estates, and attended to the social expectations. I have felt a stray moment of grief, but that's often subsumed by responsibility. While I expected my emotions to, at least once, conform to common experience, I have, instead, responded as I always have in the face of mortality: I do my job, working one stage at a time, ensuring that people are cared for and circumstances addressed. I do so with my own as I do with my flock.
Then, there is today.
In the late summer of 1988, after three quiet and lonely years as a parish priest, I became the chaplain of Hoosac School in New York. I was young, only 31, happy to return to teaching, and hoping that I would be an effective chaplain. I was given a residence on campus that was connected to a dormitory of three rooms for juniors and seniors. My proctor was one of the seniors, David, and as he was to be my student liaison with the other residents of the dorm, he was the first Hoosac student whom I met.
My years there were probably my happiest professionally, mainly because of the students whom I came to regard as "the kids". David was a sincere and loyal proctor, helping in ways that allowed me to run a happy and efficient dorm, but also turning a blind eye to some of the non-harmful antics of his dorm-mates. His laugh was infectious. He was, in his whimsy, known to dress as a ninja and participate with other students in midnight raids of the dining hall's kitchen for cookies and treats. I turned a blind eye to those antics, myself, especially in return for one of those cookies. [Really, they were the size of hubcaps.]
In the fall semester, David asked to be baptized. With the school's cook, who was the baker of the purloined cookies, and the dean of students serving as his godparents, we held the liturgy before the entire school body in the chapel and I happily initiated him into the Body of Christ. Six months later, I presented David and seven other seniors to be Confirmed by the bishop at the school's graduation. While that was the last time I saw him, I have corresponded with him and with many of his classmates over the years; they never seem absent from my life.
I learned last night that David committed suicide a week ago. He had a wife of six years and two small children. My heart cracked. All of the death of the past two years seemed to have reached its nadir. I grieve for one of my "kids". I wish he would have called me. I wish I would have had the chance to say some something, anything, that would have helped him. Even in their adulthood, and my dotage, they're still my kids.
A stanza from a poem I taught to David and his class when they were my students in English Literature comes to mind. It's by Sir Thomas More:
When I remember allAnyway, I'm not going to find The Coracle an amusing diversion for the next few days so, with your understanding, we'll return on Monday.
The friends, so link'd together,
I've seen around me fall
Like leaves in wintry weather,
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound me.
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.