Second Grade Trauma

                My father died suddenly when I was in second grade. It was eleven days before my 7^th birthday. I was heartbroken. My second grade teacher, Ms. Kostandos, had sent a book home with different children and their accounts of how they felt when their father died. I was grateful for the book and grateful that she understood what I was experiencing.

                I returned to school about a week and a half later, upset that I was even expected to go. My father was dead, after all, I shouldn’t have been expected to attend school. (My mother laughed in my face at that declaration.) I was mortified to find out that when I returned to school, it had been announced over the loud speaker that my father had died. Because I went to a Catholic school, it was protocol to say a prayer for the deceased and the family.

                I had decided that I was going to preserve his memory any way I knew how. He had a handwriting that is apparently known as backhand, which slants to the left as opposed to the right. It tends to appear illegible, which is what I knew my father’s handwriting to be. I was given a make-up assignment where I had to write some kind of story or paper maybe half a page long. I had just learned to write in cursive that year and Ms. Kostandos was familiar with my handwriting so when I produced an illegible piece of work, she wasn’t having it. She kept me after school and asked me why I had handed in such a messy piece of work, knowing I knew that it was not okay to do so. I burst into tears and explained how I wanted to be like my father and he wrote messy so I wanted to write messy.

                Ms. Kostandos didn’t pull out paperwork to recommend me for a 504 plan or suggest I be allowed to work however I felt comfortable given the loss I recently suffered. She didn’t tell me not to worry about it, that she would accept it and that I shouldn’t do it again. She explained to me, very firmly but kindly, that my father would have wanted me to do well in school and complete my work appropriately. She hugged me and told me I had to do it again, correctly, and to keep in mind that I shouldn’t let my father dying be an excuse to forget what I have been taught. I nodded. She hugged me again and handed me my paper to redo, correctly. I brought it back the next day, done correctly, and never again in my academic career, attempted to deviate from how I had been taught to do something.

                By today’s standards, Ms. Kostandos would have been damn near fired. Make a grieving child do something that they didn’t want to do? What? BLASPHEMY! The child’s spirit would be forever damaged and will feel inadequate leading to behaviors that will make him or her fodder for bullying. The child will be given as many chances as necessary to do his or her assignment correctly because it is the school’s responsibility to make sure the child never feels as though they can’t succeed, despite how they are being treated at home. Yet, there is never to be the feeling that the parents are incorrect in their upbringing of said damaged child.

                I’m going to let you in on something. Ms. Kostandos? I didn’t hate her, at all. I didn’t even dislike her after that. I may or may not have gone home and told my mother, (remember, the woman who made me return to school after my father died?) but either way, I survived. Had I told my mother, she would have been mortified that I dared to deter from the correct way to do my work because my father was dead. It was like they conferred on how to best get me to realize that life went on after someone died, even if it was your own father who shot himself while you were taking a bath.

What made me dislike her, if only for a moment, was when I painted the inside of a huge clam shell and gave it to her as a gift only to come into school early the next day and find she had stubbed out cigarettes in it. Yes, remember when teachers could smoke in school?

Clearly, I am none the worse for having been made to tow the line and not end my own existence because my father died. Of course I was horrified that this was the case, but I was 7 years old, egocentric, unable to comprehend why my father was dead and why I wasn’t allowed to do whatever the hell I wanted. I didn’t know anyone else whose parent was dead so I thought I should have carte blanche. Not the idea the rest of the world had in mind. Yet here I am, well adjusted, socially acceptable, well-liked by strangers and former colleagues who had been raised and raised their children in a similar manner.