Losing Life

Yesterday I heard that one of my former students took his own life.

Its a dull, achy, surreal sort of feeling.

One that jars you out of normalcy–the way we sometimes tend to sleepwalk through life–and reminds you of  just how bad things can get.

Of the emptiness that a human being can leave behind.

The school where I taught this particular young man was not an ordinary school.

At the time, it was self-contained at around 120 students, which meant I–the lone history teacher at times–taught nearly every student in the building.

I had some students for four years straight.

I don’t know how many  concurrent times I taught this particular guy along the way.

Enough.

Well and again enough to have my heart sink into my gut, molding together like heavy jello, at the news.

I got several calls and emails from former students.

Reeling.

Processing.

Regretting.

Wondering.

All the emotions that happen when death involves some level of choice.

Just a couple hours later, without too much time for reflection, I found myself performing our nightly rituals…because, even in the face of death, normalcy has to be “done”. Babies must still be fed, diapers still have to be changed, and thankfully–there is something comforting; something pure–in rocking them to sleep.

When Justus, my ten month old, gets really, really sleepy, its like he goes back in time…to his younger days, when he wasn’t quite as squirmy and sitty-uppy and rolly-over as he is now.

So he lays in my arms, eyes fluttering as he fights off the coming weight of sleep, lifting one hand up–wistfully–to touch my face, to run his chubby fingers through my hair. He sometimes widens his eyes to check to see if I’m still there and then grins at me with a delirious open-mouthed smile.

If it was possible to stay frozen in this moment, I’d consider it.

When I finally lay him in his crib, he isn’t quite all the way asleep. He breathes heavily, checking for me every couple seconds–to see if I’m still with him or if I’ve left him alone–and at last, he falls asleep with one hand stretched through the bars of his crib resting on mine.

I have no idea how I keep myself from melting every single night.

But this one leaves me especially breathless.

I can’t help but reflecting to myself, that people need to know that someone is there to hold onto.

They need to open their eyes and see someone is present, that someone is with them.

And so I resolve, as I have a thousand nights before, that we can’t afford not to be present in the lives of those we love.

And I grieve, in what might be the thousandth night, the things that deplete and restrict and edge love out of life.

I think to myself that I need to do a better job of not letting those things matter.

Let people begrudge themselves silly, let them project and speculate and analyze their energy away.

Let them build their walls, but don’t let those walls contain you.

The only person they should be allowed to hold captive is themselves.

You? You live free to go on loving.

Because life can be lost not just all at once–as it is in the tragedy of suicide. But it can also be lost, just as severely, just as painfully, in the buildup of every day moments where we let the opportunity to open our hearts slip by.