A Child Mourns

Today I grieve for a child in my second grade class. In this job there are certain times when I have to set sorrow or frustration aside and continue on with my day. This time, it is different. Last week, out of the blue, one of my little second grade girls piped up and said matter of factly, "My daddy was killed". I stopped the lesson and asked her what had happened. She said simply, "He was shot five times in the..." and here her words trailed off as she tried to come up with the word for chest. She finally waved her hands around the front of her upper body and continued on, "here Missy...". A few other students tried to chime in with tales of family members who had also been shot, but I quieted them. This was her time. I asked her what his name was and she responded quietly, "Angel Luis". She told me she had photographs. I said I was very sorry and asked that she bring them in. Yesterday afternoon, when I picked up her class, she stood at the front of the line, clutching a number of photos...no envelope, just grimy little fingers hanging on to them for dear life. She smiled at me and said, "I have the pictures, Missy".

When we settled in the classroom, I announced we had something special today and we all needed to be very quiet and respectful. All the students knew her father had been killed and they waited for her to start. She went around the room and placed the six photos before each child. There were three photos of graves in Puerto Rico, including her father's site. He was 35. He was murdered in 2008. One photo was of her smiling reflectively in front of the grave, her face surrounded by bright flowers. One photo was of the father alive, posing in their backyard with one of the roosters he raised. The final photo was him lying in the casket, well dressed with a baseball cap and a swollen face, which one of the children immediately pointed out. In this photo, the daughter stood quietly with a slight smile at the head of the casket, right next to her father's face with a look in her eyes as if she were waiting for directions.

I asked if she knew who killed him. She shrugged her shoulders. One of the other students piped up and said, "You said it was a big boy with a gun"...but the little girl shrugged again. I asked if it were gang related and she shrugged again. When she was finished, she gathered up the photos carefully and returned to her seat. We all clapped quietly for her and thanked her for her honesty and bravery. One little girl wiped away tears but when another pointed out that she was crying, she shook her head and said, "I have something in my eye". That was it. We then got down to the ridiculous task of working on Dolch sight words for second grade. I watched the little girl holding the photos with one hand and writing her words and working diligently on her packet with the other hand. Once, she stopped writing and looked at the photos for a long time. Then, she began her task again.