Montana

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways – I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

-Socrates, according to Plato

Montana died in a small town in Texas. Montana was nine or ten years old, depending on whose report you read. Montana hung himself in the boys' restroom at school. A very rare occurrence, it seems, because an expert in the study of suicide (nice job) said that self-inflicted death happens in young children only about five times a year in the U.S. This particular death struck close to home for the simple reason that it happened in my home town, in a school where I used to work. I didn't know the child or his family, but we don't need to know someone to grieve at their departure from this world. We certainly don't need to know someone to feel the stab of pain that his parents must be feeling (I have three children of my own). We don't even need to know someone to have an understanding of the pain that they must have experienced just before murdering themselves. I can still remember clearly the emptiness and agony that went hand-in-hand with my earliest suicidal thoughts.

I was only slightly older than Montana when I realised that death would be a relief from life. I had been bullied at school (some feel that bullying led to Montana's death), but that was not a reason to die. I was failing in most of my classes even though it was obvious to everyone involved that I knew how to do the work, but that was not a reason to die. The arguing and inevitable divorce of my parents was not a reason to die. I was very familiar with alcohol at the time and had begun to play with supposedly harder drugs, although I have no idea what makes pills and herbs worse than fermented vegetables. Still not a reason to die. The one-two punch of puberty and my first junior high dance was more devastating than any of these things, yet we all go through that. So why did I want to die?

I don't know.

Maybe it was because I was dealing with adult issues too early. Or it could be that I felt that quick, easy solutions are better than patience and perseverance. Maybe I was just a blamer and finger-pointer and, when I realised that no one was truly to blame, I simply turned on myself. Or maybe I was born with a dark, spooky psyche and death fascinates me. Does it really matter why I wanted to die? I tried to murder myself and failed. Several times.

The problem is that not everyone fails. A boy of ten decided that an unknown death would be preferred to the life he knew and hung himself. Now the finger-pointing begins.

Some will rant at the school for not recognising and dealing with the problem. Some will blame the parents for the very same failures. According to some, he was simply weak-willed and would have never succeeded anyway... I feel fine sharing that view because the same was said of me. Is “self-indulgent wimp” actually a medically valid diagnosis?

The truly sad part of all of this is that while we look for someone to pin the blame on we are continuing to allow children to die. You see, “they” are not the problem. We are. As a society we fail our children, and we perpetuate the issue by blaming everyone else.

We Americans have to wake up to the fact that what we value in our society is what kills us as people and individuals. We claim to believe in free speech, whatever that really is, yet we kill people over the words they say. We glorify sex in our art, literature and entertainment, yet act appalled when our children are aware of and active in their sexuality. We give money and possessions a dominant role in our lives and then wonder why the next generation is so materialistic and self-centered. Through video games and film we make the violence of combat out to be some grand adventure (I've been there, and it's not). Then, for some reason, we don't understand why kids are violent towards one another. And we cannot fathom why, in a society that acts as if there is no God, children grow up with no hope and turn the violence upon themselves. Of course, not every American behaves this way, but as a society...

The suicide of a child in America does not surprise me. It saddens me, but it doesn't surprise me. We adults act like children, and our children grow up too fast. We spend so much time chasing the "American Dream" that our kids are being raised by schools, daycares and video screens. Instead of fathers teaching boys to be men, and mothers teaching girls to be women, schools teach them to be androgynous nobodies. We let TV and Nintendo dictate morality rather than take that responsibility upon ourselves. And then we blame everyone else for the way the world is. We want the quick, easy solution. Unfortunately, raising kids, like changing society, requires patience and perseverance.

So, another child has fallen through the cracks. No one person or group is to blame. We all are. If you could go back in time and ask a Viking why he enjoyed going out to burn, rape and pillage, he would probably shrug his shoulders and say, “It's what we do. We're Vikings”. He would not understand that there might be something wrong with the way he lives. Why do we live the way we do? Because we're Americans. It's what we do.