The Observation Deck

Ivor,
Halfway through your post I thought I must be reading a post from Gary Rice or other wise adult! Was that you? Extremely well written and insightful.

Right before Christmas my 18 yo called me on a Sunday evening when he was supposed to be working in a panic. He told me he was at the ER and I immediately thought he cut a finger off. But he got a call at work from another friend who told him she found their mutual friend overdosed and she was taken to the ER where her stomach was being pumped. He left work immediately and met her there and called me and said "Mom you HAVE to come" and I say "Why do I have to come?" Not because I didn't want to but I didn't feel I belonged. He said "She has no other family that came". I told him I would put the kids to bed and be up there. But in the next twenty minutes they told him they were transferring to her to Metro since she had no insurance and to go home. For the past several months this girl had been on my mind and I kept asking him to invite her over. He did and she said she would come but never did. Her mom has been gone since she was in Kindergarten and her dad maybe always and she was raised by a grandmother who is ailing in a nursing home so now raised by an uncle. She was kicked out of school for behavior. Gee I wonder why she was so angry? She is 16/17 and working to put food on her own table and the stress from the bills was too much. Do you think she fell through the cracks? I can't speak for the school since I don't know what she did to get kicked out, but couldn't ANYONE see where her anger was coming from and try to help her? Kicking out a teen doesn't cut it. I guess if she were on an IEP they couldn't have done it, but she wasn't. I know her as a smart and kind girl and they probably got to see her anger.

Her life, like so many others in our own neighborhood, is very different from my son's, my own, many of ours. And even in a two parent, relatively or seemingly ok household, teens still go through things and can't talk to their own parents until they pass age 18. I can't blame them since I can listen to other kids without any judgment, but when my own son does stupid things the fear in me rises up and I want to "correct him".

Why parents have a difficult time talking and listening is because when they see things in their kids that are different than them, they are uncomfortable. When they see things in their kids that are similar to them, they FREAK out because they want better for their kids. They don't want them to take that long painful road to get to awareness. They want it to just appear without the pain and mistakes. So we lecture and threaten and beg, and they turn us off. Until they start to make those mistakes and then realize we might know something.

Life is really hard for a lot of people right now and the trickling effect to the children is inevitable. Yes the problems are different. Our children aren't out working in 8th grade instead of being in school because of a depression. Some things are much easier now, but as Ivor stated, the emotions that run through children do not change much from generation to generation. I think if you have a center or something that helps even one teen in a year not commit suicide, it is enough. I don't know what the answer to it is but I hope it gets found.

Life is never easy.
It is humbling in the extreme to read compliments attributed to my having attributes of wisdom that people apparently admire.
Thank you all.
But..
I will let them flow THROUGH me, however, and go on to all of the others who gave me whatever wisdom that I might possess, as indeed, that wisdom flowed through them and from those before them, back to the Creator and Source of all that is wise.
We live in times that are not easy, but yes indeed, times have never been easy.
Life is that way.
But here is a story, the veracity of which, I cannot verify, but this is as it was told to me.
Just a story...
I've always been interested in WWII history. Once, a fellow presented me with a small stone. Supposedly, it was found by an unknown American soldier on the ground, by a stack of corpses outside the crematorium at Buchenwald concentration camp. On that stone is carved a simple inscription. "l'chiam" in Hebrew.
That is, "to life"...
Apparently, someone put that stone on the ground, hoping that someone else would find it someday.
"To life", in the face of death, hopelessness, utter sorrow, utter evil.
"To life", in the face of horror, despair, and by other signs that read "Arbeit Mach Frei" and "Jedem das Seine"
"Works makes you free", and "to each his due" that is....That's what the Nazis wanted people to read.
But one solitary soul unknown, in a dirty blue-striped uniform, had a much smaller sign for someone to read someday...
To life....
l'chiam.
Hundreds of children have seen, touched, and learned about this stone, and this story.
And, in my own struggles, including be at the funeral Mass of a dear friend yesterday, my own age.
...when I played "Amazing Grace" on the guitar, and wept bitterly...
...and felt my own aging creeping up upon me...
...I remember, I must remember....to life...
We live, because we must. We help...because we must...We go on...because we must.
l'chaim.
THAT is wisdom.

One more thing.

The difficulties of having youth organizations center around legal ramifications, and of an ongoing crisis in adult leadership.

Getting qualified adult leadership is a perpetual concern for youth organizations.

Successful youth groups have clear-cut adult training procedures and regulations in place, as well as having proactive criminal background checks, and crisis procedures for various contingencies.

Well-meaning, informal youth centers can sometimes develop into trouble spots without adequate direction and supervision in place.

It begins with the willingness to get involved, and having the tenacity to see plans through.

It begins, or not, with you.

Jim,
Would you really think someone as stubborn as me would go to a stranger for help? No. But I did, and if I can do it, anyone can.

I just buried a friend over the summer because of this. No one saw it coming. But yet, when my phone went off and I saw that I had a text message from a mutual friend of ours, who never sends me a text message, and it read "Did you hear what happened to ____"..I didn't have to hear more. I knew in my gut.

To this day I kick myself over the fact that the last time I saw my friend was at Applebee's in Rocky River, winter of 2007. I can tell you the table he was sitting at, and that he was wearing a grey shirt and jeans. Our communication grew weaker over high school since he moved to a neighboring city. But that last time I saw him, I was leaving the restaurant, and he was eating. We were in a hurry, and I just waved and he acknowledged it, and I left.

I believe that if I would have exchanged numbers, or established that same contact line with him again, I would not be typing this. I know how he felt up to the point where he pulled the trigger. I struggled for months to sleep because of the guilt. I haven't talked to him for two years, and I still felt guilty.

Jim,
Maybe you're feeling the same way about these cases. The guilt, the pondering about if you did this or that different. Everyone who is affected by suicide feels that too.

What might be a small hurdle for people in the long run, at the time it probably feels like the biggest burden on their shoulders. How is that connection between the person seeking help at that very stressful moment and the person giving help made, and how can it ultimately lead to the person ending up in a counseling office getting treated and healed?

Maybe everyone is missing the point Jim is making. I think, Jim correct me if I'm wrong, I have the point.

Jim does not want to develop a type of Teen Chat Room/Center where all teens congregate. As Dee said, that's a hard thing to achieve. What Jim is wondering, just like I am, is how is that CONNECTION between the person in despair and the adult or whoever wants to help, made at the moment a person needs it the most. Is it an online chat room? Is it a hotline? That's what I'm wondering.

There is a suicide hotline available now. I know a few friends who have used it. They know what they are doing. But what if there was something local, something more easily approachable.

I don't know what that may be, but like Justine, I hope something can be thought of.

A favorite young cousin of mine wanted to come and be with my family for awhile.

Said he just had to get away.

He was 15 years old.

We said "Not right now, please".

No, we said.

You know how it goes. We had stuff going on and all. I was kinda busy.

I'd taught him some music before, and helped him in some areas of life.

He was a favorite cousin.

He killed himself, not long afterwards.

Maybe if I'd only....you know the rest....

They said he had plenty of problems. That it was no one's fault...

Uh-huh...

Ivor, you are not alone with those feelings about the one who left you in this way.

This type of thing touches lives well beyond the one afflicted.

The event with my cousin happened many years ago in real time, but only in the blink of the mind's eye, at least in my own mental clock.

Remember that stone, there are others who need us today.

l'chiam.

to life....

Let the experiences that you have had, help you to help others.

There's an old Quaker expression...

All God has is thee.