My older son is a high school senior this year. He’s finishing up thirteen years of school work – lessons learned – both in and outside of the classroom, friends made and lost, and an enormous chunk of his life spent in public school classrooms. And now, it’s just about over – but over in a way that no one expected or could have ever foreseen. He left for spring break a little over a month ago and has now been told that his time on his high school’s campus is done. Over. Finished. Kaput.
There are so many things that he and his classmates will miss… Senior prom. The day when all the seniors go have lunch at their old elementary schools. Maybe even senior Sunday at church. All the spring sports and related sport banquets. (My heart breaks for all the senior spring athletes…) Awards ceremonies, which kids say they hate, but really, I think they secretly love. The excitement and relief of the last finals week of high school. The graduation ceremony. And the exhilaration and weirdness of driving off their high school campus for the very last time.
Now, let me point out that the wistfulness you hear is mine – not his. He seems entirely fine with the whole thing. Pre-pandemic, he had a major case of senioritis, and, so many times, he pointed out that he was just tired of being with “those people.” And yeah, he had plans for prom, but he is not heartbroken to have those plans cancelled. Truth be told, he is also doing a little, internal happy dance that he likely won’t have to endure a graduation ceremony with 600+ other kids; he was only going along with it for his Granny and me.
So he seems fine. I am the one who is grieving.
And so, I don’t know if it’s the grief talking or if it’s the more rational part of my brain, but I can’t help but wonder how this will impact him – and all the other seniors – down the road. I can’t help but wonder, if they will – if he will – look back on this weird time – on this unusual loss – with something besides acceptance and relief.
I wonder this because this is not the first time that we have been faced with global issues at a very special time in his life. You see, he was born on September 11, 2001. Yes, THAT September 11. He came into this world about 12 hours after the second tower crumbled. We had watched the newsfeed all through the wait for him, and, truthfully, it seemed surreal – a surrealism created by the stark contrast of what my private world looked like right then and what the outside world was enduring.
For me, I was never disappointed that 9/11 was his birthday; I saw it as an immense blessing because, as the rest of the world grieved and wondered at the future, our family was rejoicing at new life. We were embracing the future in a way that can only be done with a newborn, and I imagine that many of this year’s senior parents were similarly distracted in 2001. As the world tried to find new ways to stay safe in a world that seemed bigger and scarier all the time, we were trying to figure out 2 a.m. feedings and lives on very little sleep. We were rejoicing over developmental milestones – facial expressions, crawling, solid foods – while the world was working to identify the dead. (In truth, there are still over 1,100 folks who are missing and unaccounted for, and IDs have been made as recently as last June.)
My son's birthday being on September 11 was something he didn’t really understand until he was much older; that sort of death isn’t what you share with an infant, a toddler, a preschooler, or even really an elementary kid. Today, though, he gets it, and I think he’s proud of it. He has a framed print on the wall of his bedroom that lists the names of every first-responder who died that day. Somehow, that American tragedy has become a part of who he is.
As I ponder how his identity has been shaped by his birthday, I have to also wonder how he – how the entire senior class – will be impacted by the mostly absent experience of their senior year. How does a global health crisis at such a time change who you are – who any of us is? Will these kids come out the other side proud and pleased about what they sacrificed to keep us all safe? Or will they cling to the resentment and the disappointment?
In the short term, I know we are all struggling in one way or another; I see it on every face through the Zoom screen, and I feel it in every phone call. As a pastor friend of mine posted on Facebook this week, “It's time to own that a lot of us are not okay... We are stuck. Our lives just stopped at some point, and that hurts... Our daily lives have been disrupted in a way we have never experienced before.” As the saying goes, “The struggle is real.” No doubt. We are a people hurting in this moment.
Beyond the right now, though, I wonder about the long-term. Down the road, how will this traumatic disruption shape who we are – who we all will become in the future? In many ways, the truth is that these high school graduates will have to make choices about how they let this time change them and who they become. We all do. We all have that choice. We can choose to dwell on what we have lost, what we have sacrificed, and what we never had the joy to experience. Or we can grieve and rail against the unfairness of it – feeling the hurt and mourning the losses.
Then, over time, we can heal and learn to, once again, embrace the future, knowing that this time in our lives – like so many other times – is only a part of who we are.
Y’all stay safe out there…
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (NIV)