NEVER!!

Let's play Jeopardy.  The title of the blog is the answer.  Never.
What is the question?  When do I want to experience another day like November 13, 2014 again?

It started out like a normal day.  Seminary first thing, then kids off to school and John off to work.  I did my scriptures, got a list going for the day and was working on the "exercise" part of that list.

The phone rang, I let the machine pick it up as I was in another room and typically whoever is calling is someone I don't want to talk to - read, Telemarketer.  Then my cell phone rang.  It was Kristin.
"Mom," she said through tears, "Can you come get me?"  "Can't you drive yourself?" I asked.  "No"  "Did you throw up?"  (She had missed the day before because she was sick)  "I will just tell you when you get here."

What was going on?  If she wasn't sick the next place my brain went was to a car wreck.  Cars are always getting hit at the High School, because, its, well,  High School kids driving.

I got stuck behind a de-icer truck on the way down the hill.  Really, just the way things go, but very annoying when you feel you need to get somewhere fast.

When you come to the High School from our direction, you come up to the back of it first.  There was a kid talking on his cell phone outside the building.  No red flag yet.  Then there was another one by the trailers.  Still no sign of anything unusual.  But the curb full of cars in front of the building?  Starting to see a little red.  Then I noticed quite a few people walking out of the front doors.  Wait, some of those people are adults, with distraught looking kids.  Okay, starting to have a mini-panic attack for sure.

As I was walking to the building, I asked a women behind me, who was carrying a satchel of sorts, and appeared to be coming to work if something had happened, that my daughter had called crying, and probably some other rambling.  I assume I was rambling because she just kept saying she was sorry and that she was just getting to work.  (Now, I feel stupid about that, but I'm sure she understands.)  By the way, red flags are waving all over the place in my head.

When I walked into the building, I was in full panic mode.  Several police officers were standing around, and the assistant superintendent, Mr. Hansen, was there, kids were sitting all along the hallway.  What in the world had happened?  School shooting, bomb threat?  What???

Lance pointed me in the direction of the counseling center, after telling me that Kristin would tell me what had happened, and that she was okay.  (Whew!!  That was a good thing to hear.)

The counseling center was full of crying girls.  Not just crying, but sobbing, full out wailing and weeping girls!  As soon as I got Kristin she told me - one of the girls from her soccer team had taken her life the night before!  I cannot really remember how I felt at that moment.  Sorrow for the girls, sorrow for the parents of Devann, shock, the need to comfort, the need to cry!  No doubt more, but once I was hugging girls, that was where my focus needed to be.  We stayed a while, then it was time to go home and grieve and start to heal.

I never want to experience anything close to that again!  In this age of school shootings, and all other evil things, you just never know what could happen to your kids, but the thing is, you don't send them out the door in the morning expecting something like this to happen.  I guess that is a good thing or you would never send them out the door at all.

Such a sad, unnecessary thing to happen!  So much grief!  This is the 3rd teen suicide in our valley in 7 months.  A counselor in our ward who knows about these things is getting worried.  There is an element of contagion in suicide.  The scary thing is that the girl's parents knew she was struggling.  They were working on getting her better.  She just couldn't handle things anymore.  The other scary thing is that she was a darling girl.  A senior who had just the week before been voted most inspirational by her soccer teammates.  A girl who had been voted "Spirit of DWY" at last spring's Distinguished Young Women program.  What went wrong?  Why couldn't she get to a better place in her mind?  What does that say to kids who are have much less going for them?  If her life was so great and she still killed herself, then why should I stick around?  My life is 10 or 100 or 1000 times worse!  So goes the contagion.

Of course, no one knows what happened in Devann's mind that caused her to actually go through with it.  No one ever will.  I mourn for her friends whose lives will forever be affected by this.  I mourn for kids who may decide this worked for Devann, so it will work for them, but most of all, I mourn for the family, for the loss of their beautiful daughter, and for the unfinished life she left behind.  And this mama is grateful to have her little ducklings safe and alive.

Facebook #2 Post

Facebook used to be something I just knew about.  One day I actually created a FB page, but rarely, if ever went on it.  I think my motivation was because my older girls were on it.  Once we got the iPad, I visited it occassionally, but it was still just something I had an account for and sometimes visited.  Once we created a Relief Society group, I started visiting it on a regular basis, and now, even though I don't post stuff for the RS group anymore, and I rarely post stuff on FB, I am a regular facebook troll.  (Probably not the right definition of what I do, but it feels like I'm a troll, whatever that means.)  Bottom line-FB is a regular part of my social media routine.  I don't think this is a bad thing.

I am able to keep track of a good friend who has moved away and uses FB a lot.  I can almost for sure count on her to message me back if I message her.  I have connected with childhood friends, and although we don't communicate with each other much, I can see what they are posting, commenting on, etc.  Just yesterday, because of FB, I learned one of my favorite radio personalities, Tom Magliozzi, passed away.  (He's one of the Car Talk guys for those of you who don't have any idea who he is.)  Of course, I would have heard about it on NPR, as I did this morning, and John did inform me of it this morning as well, but I was glad to hear about it as soon as I did.

One of my college roommates formed a group for us on FB.  I can easily communicate with them.  The list goes on.

One day, probably about a month and a half ago, I was trolling through my news feed and ran across a post from a "friend" of one of my "friends".  Doyle Albee is his name.  What??  Doyle Albee, the guy I went to Jr. high, with!  The guy who after looking in my annual, I remembered, was actually the guy I sat next to in Concert band!  Doyle Albee, the very awkward boy from Scottsbluff Jr. High.  Whoa!!  Talk about a blast from the past!

Of course, that opened a whole section of my memory that had been dormant for many years.  I started to remember people, especially with the help of my yearbook.  I ran across JR Brester.  Honestly, one of the nicest guys I have ever known.  You know what, his picture doesn't look much like he did way back when, but he still looks like a pretty nice guy.  He still lives in Scottsbluff, and he runs a bike shop.  (If I remember correctly, his dad had a bike shop.)  I was VERY tempted to call there and say "Hey, you probably don't remember me, but I went to Elementary school and Jr. High with you.  How in the heck are ya?"  Speaking of awkward!  So I didn't, but honestly, for a few days, Scottsbluff was on my mind.  What happened to Jayme, my best friend?  What happened to Tom, the guy who looked like John Denver and was my first proper crush, and who I would have gone to a dance with in 8th grade had my mom not put down her foot.  (I was only 14!  No way she was going to let me go!!  I did NOT want to have to tell him, but in the end I did.)  How about all those other people I went to school with for those 6 years I lived in Scottsbluff?  I actually found a lot of them as I looked through JR's friends list (see what I mean about a troll.  I'm thinking creeper describes me better!  :)  Crazy to say, many of them looked like just a grown up version of themselves.  Some I never would have recognized in a million years, but who knows what people might think I look like.  (For the record, I think I am just an aged version of who I have always looked like.  I think most people agree with that, but I did have one friend who saw my wedding picture and said she didn't think it looked a thing like me!)  Sorry, digression.

The end of the story is that I didn't request a lot of new friends from this experience.  In fact, not even one.  I may someday, but not yet.  I think what I got most from this whole experience was the shock of seeing Doyle's post, and the tidal wave that engulfed me afterward.  Its amazing what experiences get dredged up.  But here's a funny thing.  I remember I didn't like Jr. High.  I felt the typical teenage anxiety about never fitting in, how I looked, what people thought of me.  Having spent a little time thinking about it though, I think what I didn't like was me.  I didn't like the way I would sometimes treat people (I was a teenage girl - not an excuse, just a fact) and I don't think I was the best I could have been with what I had to work with.  Of course, its hard to know what was what all these years ago, but I guess I just hope that should people run across Michele Sollenbarger Rietz on a comment of one of their friends, they would think to themselves something along the lines of - "I remember her.  I went to school with her.  She was an okay kind of person."  I truly have no idea what feelings my name may conjure up!  Maybe someday I'll find out.  For now though, I would really like to know what became of Jayme and Tom!  Maybe through the magic of social media, I will find out someday.