I don't remember much about that day. I know it wasn't winter and I think it was after school, maybe about 4:30 or so. I was at Alice's house. She lived on the corner of Coy St and Vassar, one street over from my house in our quiet neighborhood. We were in her house probably scavenging for food when we heard the siren coming our way. We quickly went outside to see what we could because ambulances rarely came into our area so we wanted to know what was going on.
It flew down Vassar past Alice's house with lights flashing and sirens screaming. Husbands got out of their cars from work and walked to the corner to peer down the street. Wives dried their hands on aprons as they came out their side doors from cooking supper to look. Kids grabbed their bikes and raced after the lights and siren to check out the excitement. People of every age, up and down the streets, came out of their small, safe nests to watch the ambulance race down the thru street. Something important was happening but nobody knew what.
It turned left several streets down onto Morehouse. We had lots of school friends and acquaintances down there. Kathy Butte, Linda Johnson, Illona Geiger. The McManamen's. We didn't go down there. Maybe it was too close to supper or maybe we were supposed to be doing something else. I just don't remember. But, we got busy again, doing whatever we were doing and the excitement of the ambulance faded for a little while that afternoon.
I was leaving Alice's house to go home when we saw the vehicle coming back our way down Vassar. This time there were no lights. No sirens. No excitement. It just drove back slowly down the street retracing the direction it had come in. It seemed strange. I didn't understand. Why no hurry? Why no rush to the hospital? What had happened?
We found out the next day that our classmate, 15 year old Michael McManamen, had killed himself that afternoon with a gun. We heard something about an argument with his sister or his mom or his dad but we never learned the whole story.
I had known Mike from school as an acquaintance not as a friend. He was a year older than I was. He seemed like an OK kid. His family seemed like a good one. No public drama. They were smart kids, good students, from a good, wholesome family. Everything seemed OK--but now we knew it wasn't. Something had been horribly wrong for Mike. His despondency must have been tremendously overwhelming. As far as he could see, there had been only one way out of his pain and he had taken it. My heart hurts for his family even now--my heart hurts for him, even now.
There were no counselors called into school for us the next day. There were only whispers at the lockers. Teachers didn't ask us how we felt or how we were handling it. We didn't even know if they knew. We all suffered our private pain in whispers, or in silence. We wondered how this could have happened to someone we knew. We wondered how bad life had to be to do this to yourself--to your family?
Something changed for me that day. My assumed safety buffer was breached. The illusion of "everything will always be all right if your family is good" was gone. Just because your mom and dad loved you and took care of you wasn't a guarantee that you wouldn't be blindsided by something awful like Michael had been. If it happened to him, couldn't it happen to someone close to me--or to me? Would it ever happen to me?
I just didn't know anymore.
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