Putting Things in Perspective

Exactly one week ago, my daughter got in a car accident in which her car was totalled. My day started with a phone call from her cell phone. When I picked up the line, a male voice asked me if I was Mrs. So and So. I said, "Yes." He identified himself as a police officer and informed me that my daughter was in a car crash. I asked him if she was alive. He said, "Yes," but they are preparing to take her to the hospital. In my further short conversation with him I found out that she was mostly OK, but shaken up and crying, and that is why he called himself. This opened up a saga of doctor visits, insurance filing (she was not at fault), adjuster negotiations, and looking for a car replacement. But looking on the bright side of things, it could have been much, much worse.

Then on Tuesday morning of this week we found out that my son's classmate and a friend had committed suicide the night before at his own house. Just a few hours prior to that my son invited him to hang out on his school bus before the driver got in. They talked and joked around, and the boy asked him how it would make my son feel feel if he (this boy) killed himself. My son thought this was a purely theoretical questions, and told him that it would put him through such incredible pain that he doesn't even want to think about it. Later than night he send an IM via Facebook to one of the girls in class, and a SMS message to another one saying that he is going to go shoot himself. One thought this was a stupid joke, and the other one did not even check the message till next morning. By then the boy had long been dead of a gun shot wound to his head.

For us this was two hits and two misses in the last 7 days. It was a lot worse for the parents of that boy. I can only repeat my advice to all of the parents to talk to their children and to maintain as close connection to them as possible. And also to quote Nabokov (from memory, so it may sound a bit different verbatim): "Spoil your children, ladies and gentlemen. Who knows what they will have to experience in the future."