I had some incredibly sad news this week - an old student of mine took his own life a few months ago. He was only 25 years old and was such a genuine, funny and thoughtful young man. I'm not sure what went wrong for him as I only have the barest of details, but I can only hope that his pain has now ended. What makes his death even more poignant for me is that he not only leaves behind his parents for whom this must be such a difficult time and I cannot even begin to imagine what they are feeling, but he also leaves behind a young son. It is heartbreaking to think that as he grows up he won't have any real memories of his dad.
It's not the first time that we have lost a past student like this and it doesn't get any easier to hear of young people feeling that they have nowhere to turn or no other option but to end it. One assumes when you hear of things like this that it is likely to be down to mental ill health. This is an area where there is a distinct lack of funding in my opinion which results in very limited resources being available to people. The way things are in this country at the moment, economically and politically, there are an awful lot of people who are struggling and this will undoubtedly be impacting on their mental health. No one is immune to finding things hard at some point in their life, myself included and the dark days can be really hard to get through without the right support. I'm lucky, I have an amazing family to support me, food on the table and a roof over my head; there are far too many people across the world who don't have that.
When we lost Cal it rocked us all completely. If you looked at his history and saw him only through those eyes it would be easy to say that it was always going to happen, that it was just the route he would take. What you won't have seen though is the incredibly funny, fiercely loyal and thoughtful young man that he was. I watched him grow from this cheeky little 'scally' into this amazing young man who we were all so proud of, I just wish he knew that. Whenever I think of him I wish I had seen him on his last day, to give him a sympathetic ear, to listen and be there for him... I wish he was still here, I wish they both were.
It's hard losing anyone. A family member, a friend, young or old, they take a piece of your heart. For me, it's good to think about them, talk about them when I need to and yes I quite often have a good cry about them too. You don't forget about them and the pain is always there, but it does get easier to get through each day as time goes on. You get up and go through the motions and gradually you think about the shock of loss a little less and remember the days where you couldn't breathe for laughing so hard at something that they said or did or the time that you heart could have literally burst with pride at the person they had become knowing that even if it was tiny, you had a small part to play in that.
M x
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