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Students reflect on life changing experience, loss |
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Thursday, 22 March 2007 |
by LINDSAY CRAVEN
Lifestyles Editor
“Think about taking all of your best friends you’ve had in your life and erasing half of them,” Charles R. Snow, a junior geology major, said when describing what it is like to lose a parent.
Snow lost his father to a car accident the summer before his senior year of high school. He was 17 years old at the time.
“Immediately I went through a lot of bouts of depression and during those times did a lot of soul searching and figuring out a lot of things about life and myself,” he said. “It took a good three and a half, four years to really ‘get over it.’”
“The night before my dad died he wanted to come downstairs and tell me he loved me before he went to bed and my mom told him ‘no, he already knows that.’ She told me that afterwards and I’m really glad that she told him not to and he didn’t come down because I really would have just brushed him off like ‘yeah whatever’ and that would have really bothered me right after,” Snow said.
Another Appalachian student experienced a similar loss at age 13.
Daniel L. Joensen, a freshman psychology major, also lost his father in a car accident.
“It was really weird because he went off to work in the morning and the day went normal as always and he went to a party after work,” Joensen said. “We all went to bed and just early the next morning we were awoken by our next door neighbors and were brought downstairs and my mom was just sitting on the couch crying.”
“We were told my dad had gotten in a car accident coming home from the party … it just happened unexpectedly; very, very unexpectedly. It wasn’t the best circumstances. I never got the chance to say goodbye so it still hurts but it’s bearable. You’re never going to get over it.”
Joensen picked up reading and video games to help cope with the death of his father; two hobbies he had never really participated in before.
“I really did start to read a lot, a couple of hours every night before I went to bed just to try to forget about it and put something else in my head before I went to sleep,” he said. “I started to play more video games and just find something to occupy my mind. More and more [the pain] just kind of faded.
When it first happened I really couldn’t just cope with it.”
Joensen found that he lost interests he once shared with his father.
“I used to play baseball, he was the coach of my baseball team, and I really just dropped [it]. I didn’t want to do that anymore at all,” he said. “We used to golf every once in a while together and I’ve never touched a golf club since. I became more of a loner, I had my friends but it was tough. I just dropped everything that made me think of him because it was tough and I couldn’t do it, so I just left it and picked up new things.”
Snow said that he found solace in music and guitar after the death of his father.
“Through those times I actually became a lot better because any time that I started feeling down or depressed I’d pick [my guitar] up and start playing,” Snow said. “I did a play a good bit before he passed, but it was never as serious as sitting down for three hours straight late at night.”
Snow said he found blues music and older punk music to be the most helpful to him.
“I really got into blues then, ironically I might say,” Snow said. “There’s passion in the music and vocals in the blues because all you really need is one person. I also started listening to older punk, which was more rage and angst and it’s kind of the whole angstful fighting against the world, fighting against everything.”
Neither Joensen nor Snow chose to visit psychologists or go to counseling. However, many high
schools provide some small-scale grief counseling and referrals to adequate help for the student.
We find out what the student’s resources are and figure out if their sufficient and if they’re not then we try to help direct them to the adequate help they need, Alan Johnson, junior class counselor for Watauga High School said.
“It’s a matter of giving them a pass and telling them that they can come to my office and just have a coke and get away from all the pressures and questions,” Johnson said.
Johnson reports that there is an average of approximately 15 to 20 students who lose a parent at Watauga High each year of a student body of 1,400.
“I kept it to myself; I really didn’t talk about it very much” Joensen said. “My mom offered to get a psychologist but I never wanted one. I wanted to deal with it on my own and it worked for me.”
Both Joensen and Snow felt an intense sense of responsibility and duty with the passing of their father.
Joensen was the oldest of his siblings and felt it was his job to take over the roles his father played.
“I had to basically take on doing things around the house that my dad would have done and my life changed a lot,” Joensen said. “The responsibilities I had, the things I could and could not do; it was tough.”
Snow felt similar responsibility for his mother, as he is an only child.
“My immediate thoughts were ‘I’m going to drop out of school and start working to take care of my mom and be supportive for my family’. Then a few days later the immediate shock goes away you realize, ‘yeah, things are going to be a little tight moneywise, but things will go on.’
It dawned on me after that that life is too precious to bury yourself in anything unworthy, uninspiring.
You only live once and you don’t know how long you’re here or when it’s going to go so why not experience everything and do everything you can while you’re here while living by good morals.”
Joensen felt that he reevaluated his goals and future with his father’s death.
“Sometimes I can’t help but think, ‘what if he was here now? Where would I be? Would I be here?’ I like where I am, but it did change my future outlook a lot,” he said. “In my career I wanted to be a salesman like him and now I think I’m going to do a computer science major and I really just rethought my whole life.”
Snow left a piece of advice for students who have not experienced this kind of loss.
“Enjoy the time you have with [your parents] and let them you know that you really appreciate them because no matter how many fights you get in; they still love you,” he said. “Sit down and think about it and all the things they’ve given for you, even if they were a bad parent, they still gave a good bit of their life and effort into you, especially if you’ve made it up to college. Let them know you appreciate them no matter what differences you have.”
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