Today I said goodbye to one of my students, forever.
It was a moving service, although myself, some of the staff, and senior students could only watch via a livestream due to COVID restrictions. It was hard to see some of his friends, my students, being the coffin-bearers. I can only imagine how they are feeling, or what that experience is like.
Perhaps the hardest moment came at the end, when we played a video that his Year 11 friends had put together. Stitched together were photos from his childhood, videos of him skating and dancing with friends, or mucking around with his mates at school. To see his growth from a gorgeous baby to a young man with a near-constant smile, and know that we'd never see him again, wrenched my heart.
As the video finished I stepped outside onto the balcony overlooking the school grounds and quietly wept.
I wept for a boy whose smile I won't see in my class. I wept for a family who have already suffered so much that now have to cope with a new, deep and profound grief. I wept for his friends who were struggling to understand how this could happen.
As the tears quietly fell I looked over the school grounds, with our grove, our lake, and our green grass. I saw a beauty, a sense of natural peace, that was completely at odds with my heart. Yet, at the same time, it seemed to fit. That a part of the beauty of life is death. I know there is more to this moment, but I'm not ready to process that yet.
Now we need to support a community that are mourning. Not only are his peers struggling to come to terms with his death, they now have to face an extension of the lockdown and a week or more of online learning. Many of his friends are in Year 12 and are juggling the death of a friend, study expectations, and interruptions to their Trial HSC Exams.
We will listen. We will comfort. We will grieve with them.
We will let the boys know that it's healthy to cry. That they don't have to have it all together, they can become a bit frayed at the edges and that no-one is meant to be okay after an event like this.
For me, it's another chance to let my students know that they are cared for and valued. Every single day. I'm not perfect at this, but I try. It has to be enough.
It was a moving service, although myself, some of the staff, and senior students could only watch via a livestream due to COVID restrictions. It was hard to see some of his friends, my students, being the coffin-bearers. I can only imagine how they are feeling, or what that experience is like.
Perhaps the hardest moment came at the end, when we played a video that his Year 11 friends had put together. Stitched together were photos from his childhood, videos of him skating and dancing with friends, or mucking around with his mates at school. To see his growth from a gorgeous baby to a young man with a near-constant smile, and know that we'd never see him again, wrenched my heart.
As the video finished I stepped outside onto the balcony overlooking the school grounds and quietly wept.
I wept for a boy whose smile I won't see in my class. I wept for a family who have already suffered so much that now have to cope with a new, deep and profound grief. I wept for his friends who were struggling to understand how this could happen.
As the tears quietly fell I looked over the school grounds, with our grove, our lake, and our green grass. I saw a beauty, a sense of natural peace, that was completely at odds with my heart. Yet, at the same time, it seemed to fit. That a part of the beauty of life is death. I know there is more to this moment, but I'm not ready to process that yet.
Now we need to support a community that are mourning. Not only are his peers struggling to come to terms with his death, they now have to face an extension of the lockdown and a week or more of online learning. Many of his friends are in Year 12 and are juggling the death of a friend, study expectations, and interruptions to their Trial HSC Exams.
We will listen. We will comfort. We will grieve with them.
We will let the boys know that it's healthy to cry. That they don't have to have it all together, they can become a bit frayed at the edges and that no-one is meant to be okay after an event like this.
For me, it's another chance to let my students know that they are cared for and valued. Every single day. I'm not perfect at this, but I try. It has to be enough.