James

It was sad when I read the text from a retired teacher that one of our former students was dead at the age of 35.  But it was no surprise.  He lived on the edge but wasn't tough enough for that fringe world and often found himself in the wrong place, at the wrong time with the wrong people and he always paid a hefty price for his poor judgement.

In high school, he was in our Emotional Support class.  In the 1980s and 90s, these classes were called the Emotionally Disturbed Class. The new title attempted to soften the stigma but it didn't change how these students and the rest of the school population interacted with these kids. The main stream stayed away from them. Kids stayed away from James.

A couple of times, he joined the girls' field hockey team. He didn't have any interest in the team or the sport. He just liked the defiance of joining the team and Title IX allowed him the protection to play on the team.  The coaches wanted me to kick him off the team.  But I didn't want to do that as that would only enflame his warped desire to present himself as the shunned victim.  So I let him stay with the team but he had to wear the shirt.  I thought that might deter him but he announced to everyone that he loved to wear skirts and dresses. About a week in to the season, he would quit because we just ignored his antics.

On Halloween, he came dressed wearing a straw Hawaiin shirt and a coconut bra.  Then he would spent the morning, making sexual comments to the football players who didn't leave him alone but they didn't pound him in to the ground. Then he would come running to me for protection. I thought he got what he deserved.

After he graduated from high school, I saw him few times, stoned out of his mind, laying on benches in the community.

He lost an eye in some sort of altercation and sometimes he wore a black patch and sometimes, he just exposed the damaged eye socket.

He posted on facebook, a few years back, that he would appreciate it if people would send him letters while he was in prison. I know he got out because a family friend made some kind of remark to him, hoping that his incarceration would have encouraged him to reform himself. But it hadn't.

Now, last week, his mother posted that a police office had left a business card on her door, asking her to call him.  He broke the news to her that James was dead. It appeared as if they had been estranged from each other.

I've spent the week, searching the internet for an obituary but there doesn't seem to be one. There's no place to read about his life.  There is no place to leave a comment to the family.  There doesn't appear to be any service of any kind.  It's as if James has been erased from our memories. It's as if he never existed.