A few days ago I learned that a former student of mine is listed as a missing person. In my last year as a middle school she served as the editor of the school newspaper for which I was faculty adviser. I had selected her for the position which tells you what I thought of her. She did an excellent job and I had great respect for her. At the end of the school year we went our separate ways — this was seventeen years ago. The only thing I knew about her post middle school days was that she went to college at UC Davis.
The short newspaper account of her disappearance noted that she was “at-risk” which I’ve been given to understand means that she is suicidal. Her listed address was here in Berkeley at the home of her parents. Beyond that all that was said about her was what she was last seen in the neighborhood where she lived and what she was wearing.
I was stunned.
It seems that they never stop being your student that you always feel responsible for them. Even seventeen years later.
There was next to nothing that I could find out about her via google. She had studied environmental science though she hadn’t landed a job in that field and had been, according to Linkedin, “Seeking new opportunities” for four years now. I have drawn the conclusion that she’s not been working for four years. That’s an eternity when you’re in your late twenties/early thirties.
I’ve had a lot of former students go on to enjoy great success in life: doctors, engineers, business owners, actors, directors, professors, lawyers. I naturally assumed that this now-missing young lady would enjoy similar success. But people can be badly derailed in life. I don’t here refer to those who choose a different path and meander their way through life in various places and occupations before settling down later, I mean those who get knocked for a loop by terrible circumstances or hauntings by inner demons.
I shared the news of the young lady’s disappearance with two former colleagues who had also been her teachers. Both shared memories of what a good student and person she’d been. One assured me that his church congregation would be praying for her. I find this endlessly mystifying. Specifically the notion that offering prayers will somehow help. I suppose it a reflection of helplessness. People pray when there’s literally nothing they can do. It gives them a sense that they’re helping. People pray when a loved one is badly sick and in the care of doctors. What else, they reason, is there to be done? But how do they imagine this works? Does god here that a person or a group of people are praying for a person and suddenly think, “by jove, I should help this person out instead of leaving them to die, I’ll cure them.” If it worked that way word would have gotten out and no one would stay ill for very long at all, they’d need only have someone pray to the almighty and they’d be good as gold.
What happens when prayers are offered for someone fighting cancer and the patient dies all the same? We’re told it was god’s will. Well, if god was going to do what they wanted anyway, why bother with the praying?
Two people are in a car accident and are taken to the hospital in serious condition. Their families are devout and pray for their recoveries. One of the two dies and the other makes a full recovery. What’s god playing at here? Why answer one family’s prayers and not the others? Seems cruel. But people are often told not to question god. That’s convenient. Whatever god does cannot be questioned and is their will. What a scam.
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