Tears in a Bottle
by Diane Stark
Diane, Michael’s mom is here to see you,” the school secretary said, interrupting my kindergarten classroom one Monday morning.
I turned and looked at the secretary. “I’m teaching right now. Can it wait?”
“She really needs to see you,” she insisted.
I left my students in the secretary’s care and made my way to the office, feeling a bit frustrated at the interruption, especially since Michael was absent from school that day. I reminded myself to be patient, that his mother was young and unmarried. And Michael was a special-education student with several health issues. His mom worried about him and she’d frequently call me with her concerns.
But she’d never pulled me away from my classroom in the middle of the day.
When I walked into the office, the principal ushered me into a private conference room.
“He’s gone,” Michael’s mother, Michelle, said as soon as she saw me. “I couldn’t wake him up on Sunday morning. The doctors don’t know why, but Michael’s gone.”
I could feel the tears spilling down my own cheeks. My college professors hadn’t taught me what to do if one of my students died. So I reacted, not as a teacher, but as a human being.
As she collapsed in my arms, I cried as though Michael had been my own child.
Telling a room full of six-year-olds that their classmate had died was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. They wanted to know why, and I simply didn’t know. Read the rest of this entry »