Suicide at Rutgers; and the essence of hope

So, an aside from the usual fare for these pages today.  We are all reading today that on the evening of September 19, Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi is believed to have sent a message by Twitter about his roommate, Tyler Clementi.

Tyler it seemed wanted some privacy in their dorm room for an intimate encounter.  Not an unheard of circumstance at any college dorm.  Only with Tyler, the intimate encounter was with another man.  So kids being kids, and technology being technology a bad plan was hatched to webcast Tyler's private moments to the world wide web.  That bad plan was made worse when no one thought to say - "this is too much."

News of the broadcast reached Tyler and the supposition is that he killed himself rather than face the scandal of engaging in intimate acts identical to those being engaged in by thousands of college kids on hundreds of college campuses nationwide.

We know that Police pulled his body from the Hudson river yesterday after he left a note, on Facebook, that he was jumping off the George Washington Bridge.  "Sorry" was what it said.  The Middlesex County Coroner identified his body today.  By all accounts he was a terrific kid.

So today. along with the student's family and friends, my thoughts are with the residence life staff at Rutgers.  For eight years I was an RHD (Residence Hall Director) at a university in Michigan.  In those eight years, it was one of the thoughts that scared me most - some student - feeling isolated, alone, would act out in desperation.  You can see it in your mind - if someone had just been there to say "Tyler, are you ok?" maybe things would be different.

As a matter of fact, when I was a hall director most of the kids that came my way were terrific kids. There were loving, adoring, families behind them overflowing with pride at the accomplishments of the child they dropped at my doorstep.  My commitment to the parents, aside from trying to engage their progeny to become more solid citizens, more independent critical thinkers and responsible adults, was that they would be leaving their kid someplace safe.

In training I used to tell the story that my dad told to me about the tanker in WWII who looks down at a paratrooper manning a foxhole and asks "Hey Mack, where's a safe place to park this tank?"  To which the trooper replied "Right behind me, buddy."  The same was true, to a far less dramatic degree, with the  residence life staff at any given university.

The parents show up and, if you were able to strip away all the other worry and posturing, what you would see is that what they ultimately want is a safe place to leave their kid. 

The res life professional's job is to look at them and say "right behind me, buddy."

So when we would meet with kids at the beginning of each school year, I would always include a couple of extra things in my annual speech to them:

1)  There are mistakes you can make here that will follow you around the rest of your lives; try not to make them.  The truth about college is that just about 6 out of every 10 kids who start college will graduate in 6 years.

Tyler's roommate and his friend have made just such a mistake.

2)  Nothing will happen here that will justify suicide.  Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.  If you are feeling like this might be a solution you are considering, then come and find somebody, an RA, me, a professor, a counselor - whoever.  No one on a college campus or in a dorm is ever alone unless they want to be.

Tyler, sadly enough, chose suicide. Let me say it again, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.  That is the essence of hope. No matter how bleak your present is you cannot determine with any accuracy exactly what your future might be.  But you can hope.

So maybe one of my nieces or nephews will someday read this; or perhaps too soon for my own comfort my son or daughter will be heading off to school and wanting to read dad's blog entries.  To them I would say this:

Nothing can bring this student back.  Nothing can restore his devastated parents.  No miracle will act to reinstate the innocence of the kids involved in this. But I hope all kids contemplating college learn from this story.  Learn that no matter what there is always hope.  And if you are tempted to pull that prank, or victimize another for the "fun of it", then know that there is no right way to do a wrong thing.  There is always the path to sound judgment, critical thinking, and leadership if you look for it.  Learn to try hard to make good choices, whatever you do. ANd learn to avoid the bad choices.

Finally I hope residence life professionals view this story and re-dedicate themselves to creating University communities abundant with tolerance, acceptance, and learning.  Make sure you keep open the doors of out-reach.  Remember the starfish parable.  If your res life program is any good, they taught it to you.  If not, then here it is.

One morning an elderly man was walking on a nearly deserted beach. He came upon a boy surrounded by thousands and thousands of starfish. As eagerly as he could, the youngster was picking them up and throwing them back into the ocean.

Puzzled, the older man looked at the young boy and asked, "Little boy, what are you doing?"

The youth responded without looking up, "I'm trying to save these starfish, sir."

The old man chuckled aloud, and queried, "Son, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. You really think you can make a difference doing this?"

Holding a starfish in his hand, the boy turned to the man and, gently tossing the starfish back into the water, said, "I can to this one."

So anyhow, thanks for swinging by my soapbox today.  I did not intend on an entry for today, and certainly not on such a topic as this, but even small town dads are not immune.  My mother told me once that when you have kids, you're never the same - everybody's kids are your kids.  Everything that happens to somebody else's kid could some day happen to your kid.

Wherever you are; whatever you are facing - please know this - no person ever walks alone.  We are today reminded that, no matter what, there is always hope.

Dennis

The miracle story of my miracle daughter, on her fourth birthday

My daughter is 4 years old, today.  She is everything you would imagine in a great kid.  Bright, funny, cute with huge blue eyes and the personality of a dolphin.  She is our miracle.

I used to joke, after my son was born, that the miracle of childbirth wasn't that anyone would ever have one baby. It is that anyone would ever have a second.  It is a scary thing bringing a child into this world. So much responsibility and so many what-ifs.  That, along with the actual act of carrying a child to term and then actually delivering it is enough to scare many away.

When our son was born, the pregnancy was uneventful aside from the run of the mill stuff.  No real scares. We conceived the first month we actually set about trying to start a family and the pregnancy was pretty much textbook stuff.  There was, however, just one brief scare during his delivery when the bloodflow from mom to baby was obstructed and his heart rate plummeted in utero, but that was about it. In hindsight, comparatively speaking, it was hardly even a bump in the road.

But you know what they say, sometimes you just don't know what you just don't know.  Such was the case with the relatively minor scare during delivery.  As it was, that one little scare terrified me.  The thought of what might have happened was enough to convince me that one was enough.  I hated the hospital, the monitors, the not knowing if everything would be OK.  When our son was born I thought we took home the pot on our first round of blackjack against the house and that we should walk away from the table right then.  I told my wife I would be perfectly happy raising just that one wonderful child we had.  She said she was not sure just yet.

So after our son was about 2, we started talking about having another baby.  My wife, the organized one in the family (if we lived on Sesame Street, she would be Bert and I would be every bit of Ernie and then some), started planning for a second child.

"We'll start in December," she said "so we can have a September baby."

I recall laughing and saying that there was no guarantee that would work.  Nonetheless she was confident and we started in December...of 2002...so we could have a September baby.

By September of 2003 we were concerned.

By September of 2004 we had watched every TV special on infertility, worn out several computer keyboards searching the Internet, and tried just about every home remedy short of voo-doo ritual aimed at engaging the fertility gods and blessing us with a second child.  No luck.

By 2005 we were at the threshold of the dreaded "specialist."  Specialist is Latin for a place where "there is no modesty."  I recall she was a humorless, brilliant woman with cartoon sperm all over her office.  Ceramic sperm, cardboard sperm, sperm in bas relief coming out of the walls.  There were even several "sperm mobiles" hanging from the ceiling.  If it was in a movie it would have been hilarious.  I think there was even a sperm puppet but my memory might be wrong on that one.  My reaction to all of it was one of dread.

"How much hope, and how much money." Those were the thoughts that dominated my mind on the trips to the specialist.  I had a definite budget for both.

My wife, Jeanine, for her part, was as courageous as I have ever seen any person about the process. "Whatever we need to do, we'll do it," she said.

Yeah, easy for you to say, sister.  You aren't getting sent into the room with vinyl couch, dirty magazines, and Tupperware and everyone knows what you are up to in there. 

Honestly, talk about the place where shame goes to die, the "collection lab" is the epicenter of the "no humility" zone.  On my first visit, I walked into my private room, took one look at the vinyl couch and began to laugh so hard that the 20 something female lab technician came back to check on me.

"Yes, ma'am, of course I am OK" I recall saying. "No ma'am, I'm just laughing at the couch...I don't know why I am laughing at the couch...It's a funny couch...No, I don't need any help and I don't think my wife would appreciate you asking me that question in these circumstances..."  I told her.  After that I heard her walk away laughing.

So after all the tests, two surgeries for my wife, and more "procedures," plus the addition of a second job for me to help pay for the procedures, it was now September, 2005.  Along the way, in July of 2005, my dad died unexpectedly.  I felt like quitting.  We were broke, financially and emotionally.  I was working two jobs, my wife had already had a miscarriage, we had a five year old boy at home who was perfect in every way you could expect a five year old boy to be perfect - handsome, funny, strong, smart, well mannered, compassionate.  I was ready to quit. I wanted to quit and I told my wife I was quitting.  She was faithful and said, "not just yet."

It was late summer in 2005 that my wife, unable to sleep and channel surfing after midnight, made a significant discovery watching one of those morbid TV medical shows. You know the ones, they show you all the physical torment a person is going through and you see how all the doctors along the way have screwed up diagnosing their condition until that one special doctor sees something that fixes it.  She was watching this show and I heard her say "This is me, this is what I have..."  Skeptical and tired though I was, I had to admit that the symptoms described did seem like her in a mysterious, unsolvable inability to become pregnant kind of way.

So she, the "A" student, took copious notes and we made an appointment with our "specialist" and our family doctor.  Both  gave us a collective "m'eh."  I was going on 41, my wife just turned 39 and I think they thought it was time for us to start looking at other options (the specialist was talking "IVF" to which our bank account said "NFW" and our family doctor was talking about adoption).  But, the Nurse Practitioner, an enthusiastic force to be reckoned with, had heard of this condition, had seen it in her own family, and, after a simple blood test and the writing of a 7.00 per month prescription, ultimately got us on what we thought was the right path.

So meds in hand, we started a new course of medicine and procedures.  The specialist's fees were not enough to make us go broke all at once, but just enough to bankrupt us slowly over time.  By November, 2005 we started talking about what seemed obvious - if we weren't pregnant by December then we were done.

When the middle of December, 2005 came and the monthly pregnancy test came back negative, we decided we had had enough.  We were done.  Jeanine, earlier in the summer had another miscarriage, there was thousands upon thousands of dollars spent at the specialist, horrible fights, horrible tension, the romance gone from our marriage. We decided "enough."  Our November visit to the specialist would have been our last. That is, except, as it ultimately turned out, for that one part of living where, just when you've made up your mind to quit, hope has a way of tip-toeing in and whispering softly, "not just yet."

After 4 years of trying, our minds were made up. We resolved to meet our family at Christmas, 2005 and just get on with our life.  We gathered at my oldest brother's home for family Christmas - the first time we had all been together since my dad died. 

As one of the executors of his estate, I had a modest amount of his money to distribute to each of my siblings and thought this would be the perfect time to do it.  Dad's passing was a surprise and hit us all very hard, so I sought out each sibling privately and delivered to each, individually, an envelope with a little money in it from Dad.

My oldest brother, himself a family man, in the quiet of his beautifully appointed dining room, looked at me as I handed him the envelope and said "Denny, you got bills?"  I actually laughed out loud and said, "Yeah, Pat, you could say I got some bills..."

He met my gaze and handed his envelope back to me without even counting what was in it, and said "well then take this, and do something nice for your family."  It was a gesture so kind and generous and unexpected that I didn't know what to say.  I was embarrassed. Not wanting to refuse his generosity, I thanked him and put the money in my jacket pocket.

On the way home I told my wife about the encounter.  I am not too proud to admit that we both cried a bit as our son snoozed in the car seat behind us.  Without either of us saying it out loud, we both knew what we do with that sudden, lovely, unexpected gesture. We both knew what the "nice thing" would be that we would do for our family.

The next morning we called the specialist and arranged for an appointment the following week, the last week of December, 2005.  The money was just enough to cover one more "procedure." So once again we threw our modesty out the window, handed over the money, and said a little prayer.  That prayer was answered 10 months later when we welcomed a fantastic daughter into our family.

In the end, it turned out that we started in December (2002) to have a September (2006) baby.

The birth announcements we sent introducing our miracle daughter, the daughter who came home after we had all but given up dreaming about her, read "Sometimes, when life tells you to quit, hope walks in on tip-toe and whispers "not just yet." 

She is four years old today and, along with her big  brother, stands as the greatest thing I have ever done with my life.  She is a pig-tailed, giggly, wonderful slice of Heaven on Earth. 

Happy Birthday, little frog. Your mom, dad, big brother and all of your family loves you. Even the cats think you are cool.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and sharing this story of how the frog came into our lives.  I hope all is well with you and yours and that during your journey you take the time to remember that hope, just after love, is the greatest of all gifts.

Dennis