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numberfive · 08-31-2003, 09:49 PM

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Preteen's suicide leaves many questions about subtle warnings

By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Stu Allen and Fay Freedman are not combing the aisles of Office Max for back-to-school binders this week. They're not sewing name labels on fall jackets and gloves.

Instead, they are trying to stitch their lives together without their only child. They're shopping for cause and effect.

Jane would have been a seventh-grader next week but she is gone. The Seattle 12-year-old with the smiling lips and somber eyes unfathomably died by her own hand at home last Jan. 13, so young, bright and fragile.

How Jane died is all too horrifically clear to a mother and father who surely feel freshly flayed by grief each day that they get up. Particularly this week as friends supply their own precious, chattering, mood-swinging children for middle school -- the crucible where their mettle will be tested and hopefully not melt down.

At school, teachers and administrators can screen for knives and slam the brakes on the obvious brands of harassment, name-calling and intimidation that we have all come to know so well since Columbine. More labels are now slapped on kids than on their clothing: Bully. Queen Bee. Sidekick. Jock.

And while a simple answer, as small and clearly printed as a hall pass, would help Jane's parents, schoolmates and teachers to go on, questions only bring more questions.

How much hidden unhappiness did Jane take to school along with her backpack even before the first bell rang?

What are the clear cues to a teacher that something is seriously wrong?

And what messages, if any, did Jane, a poet and artist, leave for us to tuck into the pockets of our own preteens?

E-mails between Jane's parents and her school started soon after last fall began. By October, at home, Jane was saying she was being teased, pointed at, whispered about and ostracized at school.

But, at school, Jane said nothing when asked for specific whos and wheres.

Teachers, on alert, reported seeing nothing alarming or out of the ordinary being aimed at Jane.

In December, Jane's parents later learned, Jane had "melted down" in a P.E. class, crying that she hated the kids, the game, the school. But, by the next week, she was reportedly "on the right track," again.

In writing class, she both shone and flashed an occasional sign of inner turbulence.

In math, she was smiling more, seeming less inward.
In English and history, there were times when she could be cutting and times when things seemed slightly awry. But, in science, she seemed happier as the term continued.

The grades coming home were all A's. But she often came home crying, Jane's dad said. "She felt that a small core group of girls kept grinding her down," Allen said. So, together, they read all the books. "Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children." And "Mom, They're Teasing Me."

At home, Jane was instant messaging with other girls, which seemed a good sign but also can be an instant route to insults. "Ihateyoujaneyousuck" was the screen name of one of the girls with whom she played The Friend Test on the Internet. And when that popped on the screen, Jane was visibly upset.

It wasn't a nice game name, for sure. But was it any worse than some your own child might receive? As for Jane's reaction, if you have a child that age, you know the emotional roller coaster is always running even when the fair is not in town.

At school, administrators helped Jane strategize ways to connect and make friends. She joined the basketball team. She sported a chic new haircut.

But were her parents really getting enough information from school? And was school really getting enough information from home?

There appears to have been a lot of focus on a single child among many at her school that fall. Still, how much time and attention is enough and how much is possible?

Then came Jan. 13. In art class, Jane drew a picture of a girl and a tidal wave as part of a larger art project. That evening she took her own life.

In retrospect, after something so unthinkable as suicide, each piece of the puzzle is seen through a very different lens than before.

Take this poem by Jane. Was it written by just another bored kid waiting for the bell or by a child at the door of disaster? Jane left no simple answers. Not essay. Not even multiple choice.

Impatience.

How much longer?

It makes you feel like you will explode.

Just ... sitting ... sitting ... sitting.

Watch the seconds tick by.

5 to 3 ... tick, tick, tick.

You want to scream. How much longer must I sit here!? On the edge of sanity.

Thoughts run through your mind. Thinking you'd rather be anywhere else in the world.

Minutes turn to hours.

"What is the point of all this?" you think.

Your paper is covered in abstract doodlings

Finally the bell rings.

This saddens me in so many ways. I mean, suicide at such a young age, it's depressing. Suicide is most always depressing but when a 12 year-old, someone who hasn't even had the chance to experiance the better things in life, decides to take her own life, it hurts. It makes you, or at least me, wonder what's happening these days at school, at home, everywhere, to make children think they can make decisions like this. Ugh.