My Relationship with Summer

For a while, summers were bittersweet to me.  Summer after 3rd grade my friend Beth Surles died in a car accident with an 18-wheeler.  I can remember it like yesterday.  I was sitting in the front room where the tv currently is playing cards with Dylan and Carly.  Mom came in and told them to leave.  Then she broke the news to me.  I remember planting my face into this long, gold tube pillow we had, but I didn't cry.  I didn't know how to feel.  This was the first time I'd ever had to process a big piece of information like this.  I don't think it felt real.  I didn't go to the funeral or visitation.  How the hell are you supposed to do that at such a young age?  I know I cried eventually.  But I don't remember that moment. 

I remember one day soon after (or may that same day I found out) I was in the back room of our house and CMT was on (country music television).  I was still in the midst of my country phase.  A Trisha Yearwood video came on.  It's black and white and she's walking by the ocean.  Maybe it's "Walk Away Joe."  Maybe not.  I know it when I hear it.  And it always reminds me of that summer.  That afternoon.  Maybe this is why when I hear country music (esp country music from the 90's), it brings a similar feeling of sadness and isolation that summer carries.   

From then on, I remember feeling a little scared in the summer-- not like terrified but a worried, nervous scared.  When you're little summer is mainly about family vacations and seeing a few friends at the pool.  Not school friends.  And so a tinge of fear grew inside me that my friends would die in the summer.  School ended and you no longer saw people on a regular basis.  You no longer saw them every day to confirm they were still alive.    I remember this distaste for summer being there until the summer I fell in love with Camp Bratton Green.  1996.  I had been for 2 years prior to 96 but the summer after 6th grade is when it became my second home... and summer was no longer a time when my friends might all die.  Instead, it was a time to see some of my most beloved friends and have the time of our lives. 

The fear and worry is certainly gone.  But summer never really shed it's fatal reputation for me.  Bad things continued to mainly happen in the summer.  In fact, really the only significant death in my life that hasn't been in the summer is my grandmother's.  By no means am I implying I have had a boat load of tragedy to deal with.  But just of the few things that have indirectly or directly affected me, they seem to always happen in the summer.  I feel like my friend Ann Marie's parents got divorced in the summer (or that's when I learned of it),  Pecos died in the summer, Beth's dad died in the summer, Ann Marie's grandma died in the summer, last summer my friend David's dad died, and this year (near the end of April) a student at OHS lost his battle with a brain tumor... not quite summer but the weather is certainly warm enough in April to make it feel like it.  I only really know what funerals are like in the sweltering, Mississippi heat.    

I guess this first week of summer -- after a few days oscillating between mental states of joy, relief, exhaustion, realization that school's out!,  repeat -- this is the next thing that popped into my mind.  I was driving today and remembered last summer when Mom, Dylan, Joe and I visited the place where Pecos drowned.  I wondered if the people directly affected by any of the events above are preparing their hearts for the anniversary of their tragic event.  Does the initial feeling of stale, humid summer air ignite the memory of their loss?  Or is there another trigger... the date on the calendar?  a sound?  a smell? 
I couldn't be happier that summer is here... especially this year.  But it still ushers in these thoughts and memories with it.  I guess this is why I couldn't fight the urge to tell my students to "have a fun summer, but please be careful" as they walked out my door for the last time.  I still have a little bit of the worried little girl in me.  So, you please be careful too.