Monkey Bar Emergency

Monkey Bar Emergency

                My first year teaching second grade began like a dream. I had twenty adorable and motivated six, seven, and eight-year-olds. Although the switch in level of independence was a challenge, these little darlings were more eager to learn and happier to be there than my fifth graders had been the year before. Even outside of school, things were like a dream. I had my condo just four blocks away from school, I had a new (to me) green Honda, and I had just met the handsome man I would later marry. My dear friend Celia and I ran on a regular basis and my dog Duke and I spent nearly every weekend at my parents’ house on the western side of Arvada. Things were good.

                October is generally a difficult month in schools, but I hadn’t been teaching long enough to know that. October came and went just like any other month, and it was full of Halloween fun! For the pumpkin decorating contest, the students had voted on Michaela’s Clifford and they organized a way for everyone to have a part in the decorating. During the Halloween party, students laughed and chatted as they snacked on the typical treats of cupcakes with spider rings and popcorn balls. Yes, October had come and gone with no memorable problems.

                The next day – Tuesday – was November, and that afternoon, everything changed. The cafeteria served macaroni and cheese for lunch, Michaela’s favorite. Kids had trick-or-treating candy to have for dessert and returned to the classroom with the normal post-recess buzz of their prior second grade days. They colored with the special scented markers that rarely made an appearance, and then got their backpacks ready for the right-after-specials-dismissal and they changed into their gym shoes. During planning, I met with my teammate who was guiding me through the second grade curriculum, and then returned to my classroom to get a few things cleaned up so I would be able to go on my afternoon run with my dear Celia before the sun started going down. I started across the hall to deliver something to a colleague, but she was rushing out of her class just then.

                “Are you okay?” I asked as I fell into step with her.

                “Yeah, something’s going on, though,” she said as she directed my attention to the narrow window on the door at the end of the hall. We could see a sliver of the playground, and Mr. G’s curls were near the ground.

                “Are those your kids?” she asked.

                “Yeah…probably Cheyenne or Olivia competing for drama queen of the day,” I replied.

                Click click click click… the unmistakable sound of the principal’s heels were coming toward us. The look on her face said that this was something much more serious than drama queens competing for a crown.

                “Something’s wrong,” she said. “I think you should be with the rest of your class.”

                As I glanced out again, I could see an ambulance and paramedics rushing toward Mr. G, and in an instant, the nearly-black hair of a small child was visible on a gurney.

                “Who… What…” was all I could choke out.

                “Michaela. Her parents have been called and will meet the ambulance at the hospital.”

                My teammate had intercepted the students and took them with her class for the last bit of time before dismissal.

                I sat in the principal’s office, confused and in shock. Michaela had fallen off the monkey bars and bumped Collette before lying still in the sand. Mr. G sat across from me. Neither of us spoke. We sat, crossing our fingers that we would soon hear that Michaela was going to be just fine.

                The door to the hallway open and our eyes looked up. A police officer wanted to ask me a few questions, show her Michaela’s desk, and walk her through Michaela’s day. Before I could move, we got the news. Not the news that you would expect about a seven-year-old bouncing back from a playground injury, but the devastating news that she had died because of an undetected heart defect.

                Numbness. I answered the policewoman’s questions as best I could. She wanted to see the markers that Michaela had colored with. She wanted to know how I knew Michaela went trick-or-treating. I wanted to know how Michaela could be dead.

                This was the first crisis that I had to face as an adult; the first that had happened that directly touched my life, but not the lives of my family members. How would I face the other students tomorrow?

                I heard heels coming down the hall again, but they weren’t the principal’s, and they sounded muffled, as though I was dreaming. Who should appear in the doorway? Mom!!! I didn’t have to face this alone! She embraced me just as she had done when I was a second grader and she told me that my great-grandma had passed away. She held me like I was a small child, sat me down, got my purse out of my closet, and waited until I was ready. She took me home, where I had grown up and where she and my dad could take care of me. She got me into the house, chatted with my dad, and then left to go get some of my clothes and my dog.  

                She couldn’t tell me how to face the other students or how to remain in a career where I would be emotionally invested and fragile. She couldn’t protect me from the challenges I would face, but she was there, and when she was there, hard things didn’t seem so difficult and sad things didn’t seem quite as devastating.

                When I stood up that Friday to speak at Michaela’s memorial service, my mom was there. But she wasn’t alone. My dad and my brother had also taken time from work to support me at this challenging time. So here we are now, facing the devastation of life without my mom, and we are doing our best to support each other so that the devastation doesn’t seem quite as devastating.