Thursday – Felicia (Part 2 of 3)
Feb. 4th, 2010 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermorecontinued from yesterday.
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The principal didn’t need to tell us all how Felicia died in the morning announcements: the kids in her neighborhood all new the evening she was found, and the rest of us gleaned the details from the news reports and the things the adults talked about when they thought we were all out of earshot.
”She went in her parent’s bedroom and shot herself. That’s where she was found.
I hear that her little brother found her when he got home from school. He’s only 8.
No, no, no. He wasn’t allowed her in her parent’s room; that’s why she went in there, so he wouldn’t find her. He was home with her, but didn’t know she was there and that she was dead. Her mom found her when she came home from work.
Her dad works for the government. It was his gun that she used.
I hear she shot herself in the heart.
Those last two rumors were always consistent, and the newspapers verified them as facts: Felicia used her father’s gun to shoot herself in the heart while her parents were at work.
At least the rumors we kids were spreading were based on what really happened. The adults were fretting about things that had no basis in reality, like the suicide pact that scores of area students had supposedly signed pledging to kill ourselves in droves. This was, of course, bunk. There were a couple of other suicides at a couple of other area high schools that had happened in the preceding weeks that may have influenced Felicia in her decision, but that was the only link they had to her. Regardless, the media reported that there were concerns about this so-called pact and that other students in the region – up to 100 of us! – planned to take our lives in the near future. It had parents and school administrators on edge, and the local media outlets happily fed the hysteria for a few weeks until they got bored with it after more kids failed to die in the predicted manner.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
The whole student body was excused to go to Felicia’s funeral if they wanted to, and a lot of people did. I liked Felicia, but I didn’t really know her, so I felt like going to her funeral would be more to satisfy my curiosity than anything else, so it didn’t seem appropriate. I wish now that I had gone. I didn’t know at the time how haunted I would be, not so just by Felicia but by her mother, a woman I have never met but have never stopped worrying about.
My own mother had died that October, at the beginning of my sophomore year. Felicia died in the early spring a few months later. I was a daughter without a mother, and when I read somewhere that losing a child was the worst grief a person could endure – far worse than my own grief – I wondered how on earth Felicia’s mother was enduring the burden of her grief. What I was going through hurt like hell; the idea of something described as far worse had to hurt beyond description.
One day when I checked the mailbox after school, I found a solicitation for a needlecraft magazine and another one for Seventeen magazine. They arrived because somewhere two separate mailing lists said that there was a person at our address who enjoyed needlecraft (my mother) and another one that said a teenage girl (me) lived at this house. I wondered if the same magazine ad showed up at Felicia’s house. I thought that if the needlecraft people didn’t know to take my mom off their list, the people at Seventeen magazine probably didn’t know to scratch Felicia’s address from their list, either. When her mother got the mail that day, was she reminded that her daughter was never going to be 17, just like my mother was never going to create another needlepoint pillow? Did she put her face cry after she set the mail down, like I did?
“I hear Felicia drank half a bottle of Drano, and then shot herself because she was so much in agony,” Kelley said the other weekend, peering across the picnic table at the yearbook that lay open in front of Sandy. None of us had heard that rumor before, and Kelley didn’t say where she heard it from. I hope it isn’t true; I hate the idea of that sweet girl being in that much agony. After all these years I no longer see Felicia as a peer; I now view her from the standpoint of an adult looking back at a child. We were the same age then, but not now. I kept moving forward and am 40 years old, while Felicia will never be older than 15. My 40-year-self would love to jump in a time machine and pass along some information that Felicia didn’t know. I know she didn’t because I would have been amazed to learn these things myself at that time.
This place you are at here and now is just temporary, Felicia. In just another two and a half years, nothing that seems important to you today will matter. College will be a whole different game and someone as smart as you will come into her own in that environment. Just hang in there and ride out the storm. It gets better, but you have to hang on tight until it does.
She probably wouldn’t believe me. I know wouldn’t have believed me, either.
(To be continued)
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
.
The principal didn’t need to tell us all how Felicia died in the morning announcements: the kids in her neighborhood all new the evening she was found, and the rest of us gleaned the details from the news reports and the things the adults talked about when they thought we were all out of earshot.
”She went in her parent’s bedroom and shot herself. That’s where she was found.
I hear that her little brother found her when he got home from school. He’s only 8.
No, no, no. He wasn’t allowed her in her parent’s room; that’s why she went in there, so he wouldn’t find her. He was home with her, but didn’t know she was there and that she was dead. Her mom found her when she came home from work.
Her dad works for the government. It was his gun that she used.
I hear she shot herself in the heart.
Those last two rumors were always consistent, and the newspapers verified them as facts: Felicia used her father’s gun to shoot herself in the heart while her parents were at work.
At least the rumors we kids were spreading were based on what really happened. The adults were fretting about things that had no basis in reality, like the suicide pact that scores of area students had supposedly signed pledging to kill ourselves in droves. This was, of course, bunk. There were a couple of other suicides at a couple of other area high schools that had happened in the preceding weeks that may have influenced Felicia in her decision, but that was the only link they had to her. Regardless, the media reported that there were concerns about this so-called pact and that other students in the region – up to 100 of us! – planned to take our lives in the near future. It had parents and school administrators on edge, and the local media outlets happily fed the hysteria for a few weeks until they got bored with it after more kids failed to die in the predicted manner.
The whole student body was excused to go to Felicia’s funeral if they wanted to, and a lot of people did. I liked Felicia, but I didn’t really know her, so I felt like going to her funeral would be more to satisfy my curiosity than anything else, so it didn’t seem appropriate. I wish now that I had gone. I didn’t know at the time how haunted I would be, not so just by Felicia but by her mother, a woman I have never met but have never stopped worrying about.
My own mother had died that October, at the beginning of my sophomore year. Felicia died in the early spring a few months later. I was a daughter without a mother, and when I read somewhere that losing a child was the worst grief a person could endure – far worse than my own grief – I wondered how on earth Felicia’s mother was enduring the burden of her grief. What I was going through hurt like hell; the idea of something described as far worse had to hurt beyond description.
One day when I checked the mailbox after school, I found a solicitation for a needlecraft magazine and another one for Seventeen magazine. They arrived because somewhere two separate mailing lists said that there was a person at our address who enjoyed needlecraft (my mother) and another one that said a teenage girl (me) lived at this house. I wondered if the same magazine ad showed up at Felicia’s house. I thought that if the needlecraft people didn’t know to take my mom off their list, the people at Seventeen magazine probably didn’t know to scratch Felicia’s address from their list, either. When her mother got the mail that day, was she reminded that her daughter was never going to be 17, just like my mother was never going to create another needlepoint pillow? Did she put her face cry after she set the mail down, like I did?
“I hear Felicia drank half a bottle of Drano, and then shot herself because she was so much in agony,” Kelley said the other weekend, peering across the picnic table at the yearbook that lay open in front of Sandy. None of us had heard that rumor before, and Kelley didn’t say where she heard it from. I hope it isn’t true; I hate the idea of that sweet girl being in that much agony. After all these years I no longer see Felicia as a peer; I now view her from the standpoint of an adult looking back at a child. We were the same age then, but not now. I kept moving forward and am 40 years old, while Felicia will never be older than 15. My 40-year-self would love to jump in a time machine and pass along some information that Felicia didn’t know. I know she didn’t because I would have been amazed to learn these things myself at that time.
This place you are at here and now is just temporary, Felicia. In just another two and a half years, nothing that seems important to you today will matter. College will be a whole different game and someone as smart as you will come into her own in that environment. Just hang in there and ride out the storm. It gets better, but you have to hang on tight until it does.
She probably wouldn’t believe me. I know wouldn’t have believed me, either.
(To be continued)
