One of my new, newest students lost her brother in a car wreck on Friday night and that was really, really difficult. I have not seen my student, but his girlfriend also went to our school. He had graduated last year, but his girlfriend went there and she always sat at our, at our table with us and she was kind of a, very much a friend and ally of our, of our program, was pretty involved with a lot of the kids, knew a lot of the kids, and she had been a link previously.
So this morning they gathered our students at our program to let them know, ‘cause this happened Friday evening, so we hadn’t seen our students yet. And we gathered them, the two rooms full of kids and so that we could tell them about — that their friend had lost her brother, and so that they were aware of it. And some of them might know — and they definitely knew his girlfriend, and so that they knew that people would be sad. And when she came back to school, she would be sad. And, and just so they were able to process that a little bit.
But when they did it — and our kids are cognitively impaired at different levels. They said that he, that he passed away. And there was some confusion with some of the kids and I — they as- — they were, wanted me to read the paper before they read it out loud, and I should have done it, ’cause I would have caught that. Instead of saying that he died. So they were very confused, like some people weren’t really sure what that exactly meant. And people don’t want to say the word ‘died.’ So, it’s just kind of — it makes us feel better to say ‘passed away,’ but little kids, and I suspect the same is true with a cognitive impairment, if you’re not clear, it leaves you a little bit confused. That you use those euphemisms and in your, and in your mind, you don’t really know what they mean, and it can be very confusing. It sounds like they just went somewhere. Which is, again, it’s a way to make us feel better, but it’s not, it’s not really an accurate way of saying it and it leads to a lot of confusion.
So a couple kids were just very confused about what they were trying to tell. And I did give them, you know, a little bit of my advice that, you know, if they’re confused, you know, just say he died. Because that’s clear.