Chattanooga Mourns an Unspeakable Loss
The death of a child has a city considering how it can improve.
I can’t watch the news. It’s not that I don’t want to know what’s happening in the world. Being aware is important.
No, instead, it’s a matter of the news affecting me too deeply. If I spend even five minutes watching a news program, those stories will become an obsession. One sad story will send me into a darkness that’s hard to escape.
My parents, on the other hand, are news junkies. They can’t function if they haven’t watched all the local and world news.
Stopping to visit them for a few minutes the other night, I couldn’t help but hear the news as it blared on their TV. One story broke me.
Chattanooga mourns
Orchard Knob Elementary School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is mourning the loss of one of their students this week. All the surrounding communities are mourning as well and wondering how we can stop it from happening again.
A 10-year-old fourth grader, overwhelmed from bullying, thought his only relief would come from taking his own life. No one found him in time to save him.
It’s a terrible tragedy every time a child dies, but for a youngster to take his own life is beyond heartbreaking. That kind of awful shouldn’t even be imaginable. Yet, it’s something that keeps happening.
Second-leading cause of death
According to a CDC report released on June 24, 2019, suicide is the second-leading cause of death for those aged 10–24. A disturbing 19.2 percent of deaths in this age group are from suicide. That means that one out of every five deaths is suicide related.
At 10 years old, you know nothing about life. The greatest pleasures of life are still years beyond your grasp, yet this trend is becoming more and more common. That reality makes it impossible for me to sleep at night.
Almost a statistic
Perhaps part of the reason this local tragedy has affected me so much is that I could have been that 10-year-old boy. It was around that age that I first started contemplating ending my life.
It’s not because things were so bad that taking my life felt like an option. I had a fairly happy childhood. No, I had a mental illness that was undiagnosed and untreated until nearly 15 years later.
Still, it wouldn’t have taken much for me to cross that line. That reality has me struggling to come to terms with this local calamity.
Parents, do your best
I don’t know the family of the Chattanooga boy. The mother has told the news media that she had informed the school of the bullying, but I have no way of knowing the details.
As that family mourns, I have to believe that they did their best. I’m sure they tried to provide the support and encouragement that their child needed. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough, but they probably did not understand how bad things were until it was too late.
In my experience, I never shared with my parents how I was feeling. In fact, in my mid-twenties, when I finally got help, it surprised them to learn how bad things were with my mental health. For me to have died at 10 would have completely blindsided them.
That lack of warning makes this story even more painful.
Talk to your kids
Are you a parent? Please talk to your kids. If they seem depressed, withdrawn, or unusually angry, try to find out what they are feeling.
Bullying continues to drive one child after another to this permanent solution for a temporary problem. If you know that your child is being bullied, make time to talk to them about it. Keep talking until you are sure they are safe. Find out how the bullying makes them feel and do what you can to improve things.
Yes, Chattanooga is mourning. So am I. What should be an unspeakable tragedy has happened again.
Please remember this boy’s family in your thoughts and prayers. Talk to your kids about this story and make sure they are okay.
Resources for Suicide Prevention
United States
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Telephone: 1–800–273–8255
Chat option available
Canada
Telephone: 1.833.456.4566 — Available 24/7
Text: 45645 — Available Daily 4pm-12am ET
Chat option available
Crisis Text Line — 24/7 nationwide crisis-intervention text-message hotline created in partnership with Kids Help Phone.
Text: HOME to 686868 in Canada to text with a trained Crisis Responder.
United Kingdom
Samaritans — 24/7, toll-free crisis line, and local branches.
Telephone: 116 123
Campaign Against Living Miserably — It has a limited-hour phone and web chat options every day from 5 PM to midnight.
Telephone: 0800 58 58 58
Other Countries
List of suicide crisis lines for other lands
Please forgive me if I have not listed your country. Your life is valuable. Do an internet search for “suicide hotline” in your country to find a local number or chat option.
Until next time, keep fighting.
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