Out of Breath
When I was fourteen, an English teacher introduced me to poetry I actually liked. I can’t remember his name anymore, although I believe it began with “R,” and I remember he bore a striking resemblance to Elton John, minus the outrageous shades and outfits. We lived in a small town in the southern tier of New York State, where flamboyance was not appreciated. Mr. R. didn’t like any of the textbook collections of poetry we had at our disposal, and he mimeographed (yes, it was back in the day) a handout for us of some of his favorites. The rhythm and language of one in particular, “Little Elegy (for a Child Who Skipped Rope),” captured my imagination so powerfully that I remembered it line for line years later - although it was not till the Internet search engine became available that I was able to type in one of those lines and find out that the author, whose name I had also forgotten, was X. J. Kennedy.
Little Elegy
(for a child who skipped rope)
Here lies resting, out of breath,
Out of turns, Elizabeth
Whose quicksilver toes not quite
Cleared the whirring edge of night.
Earth whose circles round us skim
Till they catch the lightest limb,
Shelter now Elizabeth
And for her sake trip up Death.
Mr. R. pointed out to us how the rhythm of the poem imitated the rhythm of a child skipping rope, and I was awestruck, that someone could do that. Would even think to do that. And that the result could transform such a horrible, senseless event - the death of a child - and give it such beauty. It stirred a yearning in me that I did not understand. It awakened desire - though I didn’t know for what.
The Centers for Disease Control came out with statistics last month on the increase in the number of teen suicides in the last decade, and there was nothing poetic in those numbers: no meter or rhyme that could redeem them. What startled everyone at the crisis center where I work was the 71% increase in the number of suicides in girls between the ages of 10 and 14. Seventy-one percent. How could this be? A number of possible reasons were cited: the use of antidepressants to treat depression in teens without regard to possible side effects like increased suicidal ideation; the decrease in use of antidepressants to treat depression in teens caused by paranoia over possible side effects like increased suicidal ideation. The popularity of “the choking game” as a means of experiencing euphoria. Here lies resting, out of breath… No one really knows the reason for the numbers, but there they are.
Ironically, the agency I work for, which began as a hotline for runaways in the late 1960’s, has a teen education program for suicide prevention and mental health awareness, but is currently considering shutting it down. In fact, I’ve been one of the chief proponents for doing so. The service has never been fully staffed, the person who previously did the work part time no longer wishes to do it, and we have never developed strong evaluation measures for the program. Given that the agency is resource-poor as it is, and we are having to focus on core services, it seemed like an expendable program, or at least one that could be put on hold for awhile. How do we really know how effective it is? I would grouse as I was writing up the grant proposals. So what if we distributed 1100 magnets with the hotline number on it? What does this mean?
About a week or two after the statistics came out, I was working on the 2008 development budget, trying to get some quiet time around the demands of our upcoming fundraising event. I saw a message on my answering machine after I came back from lunch. Probably another silent auction donation, I thought. Instead it was a woman calling from a church in the suburbs, about a half hour away. They were having a memorial service for a girl in her daughter’s class who had died by suicide. The girl’s name was never spoken. We can call her Elizabeth. She was fourteen. “Did we have any materials we might give them to distribute?” the woman asked me. She thought people might want to make a donation. They just needed something they could do.
So that evening I drove up to the church during rush hour with brochures, donation envelopes, cards. And magnets. I thought on the way up about what the woman had told me. “She was a flamboyant girl,” she said slowly, measuring her words in that reflective way we use when we know our earlier observations now have new meaning. “Not well liked, so much as well known. I didn’t encourage the relationship, really - there was something just wrong about the family situation. The girl dressed like she was twenty. There was a stepfather. It was nothing I could pin down, but I knew something wasn’t right. But my daughter likes to champion the underdog.” I knew this impulse; had seen it in my own daughter. “I tried to get them to spend time over here mostly. There might have been warning signs, but she was a flamboyant girl. Melodramatic. None of her friends knew what to do, who to tell.”
A confirmation class was being held before the service. Teens hung around outside, some of them crying and hugging. The youth pastor was so grateful: she could not have gotten down to Richfield and back between the class and the service. “Make sure the kids know it’s not just a hotline for people with suicidal thoughts,” I said. “The counselors are trained to deal with any kind of thoughts or feelings you don’t know what to do with - guilt, grief, anger, confusion.” The pastor assured me she would do so.
There have not been a flood of donations in from Mounds View; nor have I heard that any calls came in directly related to this incident: but then, I’ve had my head buried in bowl-a-thons and budgets. Nor can I tell how effective the service I provided that evening was. But it meant something to me to give it, to have a connection with these people in their sorrow and confusion. It awakened in me a yearning of some kind. A desire.
Earth whose circles round us skim
Till they touch the lightest limb
Shelter now Elizabeth
And for her sake, trip up Death.