60 in 60 #19 Carine Part One.

 60 in 60 #19    Carine Part One. 

I am reflecting on the last 60 years, and writing 60 blog posts in 60 days. 30 about people and 30 about events, places, experiences and entities.

 

My last two years of high school were at Carine SHS in the northern suburbs of Perth, in 1978-79. Even though these were my best years at school, they were not without incident or trouble. I made a few friends which helped a lot and I got along well with the staff, mostly! but at some point in year twelve I went off the rails a little, resulting in me being suspended twice, once for swearing at a teacher and the other for offensive graffiti. Although I had a number of run-ins with the principal, Fred Marsh, who didn’t like the fact I wore unusual clothes such as waist coats to school, both suspensions were entirely justified.

Despite these disciplinary issues, I did have some successes as well. I captained the school football team in our first ever victory against Scarborough HS and I represented the school in a number of public speaking competitions including Youth Speaks for Australia. At the school graduation I won the English prize and the Public Speaking prize but Fred had the last laugh, writing me an underwhelming reference when I left.

 

Little did either of us suspect that a dozen years later I would return to work at Carine, especially not as the school’s inaugural chaplain! As described in chapter one of 60 in 60, after a few years of travelling around Australia and overseas I returned to Australia still searching for something and found it in the form of Jesus. My conversion to Christianity was based on evidence I found utterly compelling and convincing and therefore impossible to ignore. It resulted in a dramatic change in my values, attitudes and goals. I knew working with kids was my vocation, the addition of faith gave it a clearer purpose. School chaplaincy was in its infancy in WA but I could see it was a natural fit and when the job was advertised at Carine it seemed made for me. 

By that time Fred had retired and the new Principal was Cesare Digiulio. I think it’s fair to say Cesare took a little while to warm to me but in the end we became good friends and he was one of my strongest supporters. Cesare was a great leader who never missed an opportunity to support the students and attended every extra-curricular event they took part in, sporting, cultural or academic. I used to like making the joke that I was the only chaplain who could legitimately serve both God and Cesare!

 

Since the school had never had a chaplain I had a lot of scope to develop and shape the role. The brief was to provide pastoral care to the school community but the method was up to me and I embraced the opportunity with great enthusiasm. I spent the first year getting to know the students and staff and working out where I could be useful, what the needs were and how I might be able to respond to them.  

I was available as a supportive and caring listener, someone kids could talk to if they had a problem. I created a welcoming place, my office was something of an Aladdin’s cave, filled with posters, pictures, toys, puzzles, games, books and ephemera. In the end about a hundred toy planes and aircraft hung from the ceiling. Kids’ artwork was scattered around the room. There were comfortable armchairs and even a tiny fridge with cold drinks. More than a few parents were shocked upon entering my office but the students loved it and I had a steady stream of “clients” from the beginning. The issues kids came to talk about were often predictable: conflict with friends, bullying, trouble with a teacher or problems at home. I listened without judgement and provided empathy and encouragement and occasional pearls of wisdom. Sometimes though the issues were more serious: mental health challenges, sadness, loneliness, self-harm and suicidal feelings. In those instances I sometimes made referrals to other professionals or sought to get parents and families involved. 

 

I remember one day a year 10 girl revealed to me that she was suicidal. After listening to her and giving her reassurance that I cared about her I said we needed to tell her parents so that she could get support at home. I said “we’ve got three options, you can tell them, I can tell them or we can tell them together”. She asked me to help her so I arranged to visit the family at home that evening. I gently explained to them how their daughter was feeling, what some of the causes and issues were and what they could do to help her, including seeing a doctor and or a psychologist. I encouraged them to be open and willing to seek help and to do whatever they could to reassure their daughter that they loved and valued her. They assured me they would and the girl was grateful that such a difficult conversation had been had in an atmosphere of love and support.

Fast forward about three years. I was sitting in y office when the phone rang. It was the girl’s Dad calling. He said “I just want to thank you. That night changed our lives. My wife and I had no idea how ____ had been feeling. From that point on we got much more involved in her life, we changed things we did as a family, spent more time together, talked more, grew closer and happier. We’re doing really well and it all stemmed from that night when you came to talk to us”. The call was as gratifying as it was surprising and I still appreciate the sentiment and motivation to follow up a number of years later to affirm my role in helping his family.

 

Sadly, there were students at the school who didn’t seek the help they needed. Three year 10 girls made a pact to kill themselves and two of them jumped off a freeway overpass one Saturday night into the path of oncoming traffic. One died, the other was seriously injured. It was a devastating incident that sent shockwaves through the whole school community and made many of us acutely aware of the vulnerability of some teenagers and the risks they faced. The days after the suicide were powerful and dramatic. The bridge they had jumped off became a gathering place and a sort of shrine to their memory. Contagion is a huge risk after a suicide and we deeply feared that other kids may follow in their path. I spent several hours each afternoon “on duty” at the bridge, talking to kids and looking out for those at risk. This escalated on about the third day. There were 30-40 kids on the bridge and someone dropped a bunch of flowers onto the road beneath in peak hour traffic. A driver in a minivan seeing something fall from the bridge must have panicked, hit their brakes and swerved. In an instant they had crashed and rolled their vehicle 2-3 times right underneath the bridge. Kids were screaming, traffic was in chaos and pandemonium broke out on the bridge and on the road below. I heard one girl crying out, “It’s the same as Saturday night!” through her sobs. Thankfully the driver was not seriously hurt but from that point on the police got involved, patrolling the area and preventing kids from gathering on the bridge. At school, the student services team met each day to monitor how kids were going and organise necessary support. My role was to lead a memorial service at school for the girl who had died. It was held after school and was attended by over a hundred friends and peers. 

I had previous experience organising a memorial service a few years earlier for two girls who used to come to the Chip Inn drop-in centre at Warwick Church of Christ. They and their mother had been killed by their father in a murder suicide. It was a terrible time for the young people we worked with and the service was a very significant part of their grieving experience. I was guided by their friends in the music we played, the pictures we used and the words we said. The most powerful part of the service was when I opened the microphone to any of their friends who wanted to say anything or say goodbye. Dozens of grieving teenagers came out and spoke from their hearts about their sadness and the memories of their friends. They spoke with dignity and appreciated the opportunity to share their feelings and memories in such awful circumstances. They chose the music and to this day I can’t hear the songs we played without thinking about the two teenage girls who were killed and their hundreds of friends.

 

With this experience as a guide I designed a service at school that reflected on the girl who had died and gave voice to her friends as well as speaking to the issues of pain, sadness and suicide. We had a candle burning throughout and at the end of the service I reached out and snuffed the flame with my fingers and said, “This flame symbolises life but  _____ has chosen to put out her light by ending her life. She has caused untold sadness to you and her family by doing that. We don’t want anyone else to do that. We don’t want any more kids to die. If you need someone to talk to we are here, we care. Please ask for help.”

This was all a spontaneous action on my part. A colleague said to me later it was the most powerful moment of the whole service. 

A lot of things I did as school chaplain felt that way, me responding or acting in the moment, on impulse, led by prompting of the Spirit.

 

While it was never my intention, I ended up dealing with deaths and bereavements many more times in my role as a chaplain. The first time it happened followed the death of a little boy who was knocked off his bike and killed on the street beside the school. I was working with his brother in the Challenge Adventure Program that I ran for groups of students identified as low in confidence and self-esteem and had taken him and his family abseiling a few months earlier. His parents came to the school to see Cesare and specifically requested that I conduct their son’s funeral service. Of course I agreed to their request even though at that time I had never conducted a funeral. 

I had no idea at the time that it would be the first of over a dozen I would perform over the next fifteen years, for students, parents, grandparents and staff members. I became the go-to person in the school community when someone died and I became good at caring for people in grief. I treated each person with love and respect and worked hard to do the best job I possibly could in order to allow their family and friends to farewell them with grace,  care and dignity. I won’t detail them all but a couple of memories stand out, principally because they taught me so much about caring for people who are grieving and shaped my responses in the most difficult times and circumstances.

 

Around that time I was getting some physio treatment for a neck injury and unbeknownst to me, my physiotherapist was the older sister of the boy killed on his bike. She told me that during the funeral she had started to get angry at a certain point in my message when I said “I’m sure many of you are wondering or asking ‘why did this happen? Why did ____ have to die?’”

His sister said her anger rose because she thought I was about to try and explain why he had died, to give some reason, some religious cliché about it being God’s plan or purpose why her little brother was dead. She said her anger subsided when I went on to say, 

“I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know why _____ died. I can’t give you a reason or explanation. I can only tell you what I think we can learn as a result of it, that love is the most important thing in the world, that families are the most precious things we have. That we have to make the most of every day and every opportunity to tell and show people that we love them because we have no idea how long any of us have and that we need to make a priority of the things that really matter in life, the people we love and who love us”.

 

It taught me to never give cliched answers to the most profound questions or to try and explain deep mysteries as if I had divine insight or superior knowledge.

 

Another student was killed while on holiday in Malaysia. His friends approached me and asked if I would hold a memorial service for him. The school were wary of creating a culture of grief at the school and asked if I could arrange to have it at one of the local churches that supported the chaplaincy. It was fairly small, with about 20-30 kids in attendance. I hadn’t known the boy who died but had spent time with his friends as I prepared the service and learnt as much as I could about him. Apparently he had been in a bit of trouble and was seen as a bit of a problem-child at school. A few days later a small group of his friends came to my office to see me. They thanked me and said “You are the only person who never said anything negative about _____. When he died lots of people said stuff about him and the trouble he caused. We know he used to get into trouble and he did some things he shouldn’t have but you’re the only one who didn’t say anything about that or make him out to be a bad person. You treated his memory with respect. Thank you”.

It hadn’t been a conscious decision on my part, I had just tried to do the best job I could to honour the life of a young man and to care for his friends. It taught me the value and importance of being careful and considerate towards people in grief and not to judge.

 

A couple of weeks before the year 12s were due to graduate one year I received a phone call on a Sunday to tell me that a year 12 girl had been killed in a car crash. I didn’t know the girl but I found out her address and that afternoon I went to visit the family. It is one of the strongest memories I have from my time as chaplain. A woman answered the door and I introduced myself. She invited me in and I sat in the loungeroom with her parents and a couple who were close friends. The atmosphere was deeply sad, it felt like I had entered into the very presence of death. I didn’t say anything except that I was very sad to hear that ____ had died and if there was anything I could do I would. I then just sat with them in their grief, in their deeply wounded pain, in the overwhelming sadness of their loss. I didn’t try to offer any explanations or patronising commentary. I had nothing to offer other than my care, my time and my commitment to do whatever I could to support them. 

I learned in that moment the value of just being with people in grief without the need to do or say anything other than express sympathy and care. The four of them began to tell me about their daughter, what had happened, how the family dog had been injured in the crash and how they hoped it would survive, about their daughter’s friends, her sister and stories of their family. In their time of deepest pain they opened themselves to me and in the process began to share and remember and cry and grieve.

The next day they called me and asked if I would conduct the funeral service.

At school on the Monday morning there were waves of grief and sadness as more and more people learned what had happened. _____ had been popular with both staff and students and many people were affected by her death especially coming on the eve of final exams and graduation. An assembly of the year group was arranged for that morning and Tony Williamson, the beloved year 12 coordinator spoke to them but as he was speaking he was overcome with emotion and could not go on. Without warning he turned to me and said “Marcus…”. I had not expected to say anything but suddenly I was thrust into the ‘spotlight’. I thank God that in that moment I found words to say. I spoke to the kids about sadness and grief, about life and death, about despair and hope and about how _____ would not want them to give up on their hopes and dreams, that she would want them to do well in their exams and to celebrate their graduation. I then said, “I’d like to pray for you” I prayed for God to give them comfort and strength in their sadness. It was both spontaneous and profound, a moment when the divine and earthly were connected, with me as the unexpected conduit. 

The funeral was huge, held at Pinaroo Valley on a hot Saturday morning. Her family were very grateful for all I had done and many people expressed their thanks and appreciation for the service. I stayed in touch with the family for a couple of years and they even asked if I could preside at their other daughter’s wedding a few years later.

 

Before Carine entered the chaplaincy program there had been consultations with students, parents and staff regarding whether the school wanted a chaplain. One of the staff members who had opposed the idea was Max, a maths teacher and former league footballer. He didn’t have anything against me personally, he just didn’t believe a government school should have a religious affiliation. I didn’t have much to do with Max in the first few years but then he received some bad news, he had cancer. Being extremely fit Max was able to fight the disease for a couple of years as he underwent chemo and radiation therapy. He continued to teach and one day he came to my office and asked if I would perform his funeral service when the time came? For the next year and a half I walked beside Max as his health declined and the end drew near. I got to know his family. I visited him in hospital, I learned as much as I could of his story and prepared for the difficult task of farewelling a much-loved member of staff. Around this time I was coaching the school’s junior football team in the Channel 7 Cup. We had reached the Grand Final for the second year in a row, against Aquinas College. The game was a curtain-raiser before an AFL game at the WACA between Essendon and Fremantle. We had lost the previous year’s Grand Final to Aquinas and I wanted to do anything I could to inspire the boys to victory. I asked Max whether he would be willing to come and talk to the team about his experience as an East Perth player and pass on any tips before the big game. He was no longer teaching by then but readily agreed to come and speak to the kids and many of them told me afterwards how much of an impact it had on them. We went on to win the Grand Final and I like to think Max had a small part in our triumph.

 

A few months later Max succumbed to the disease and I was called on to perform my final act of service for him and his family. With so many friends and colleagues there I felt an extra level of pressure to do a good job. I confided to the mourners that Max had initially opposed the school getting a chaplain. The feedback I received affirmed that I had passed the test and I think it reinforced in many people’s minds, and convinced a few of the remaining doubters, of the value of the chaplaincy. A couple of years later I was asked by the family to officiate at the wedding of his son which was a joyous occasion. Sadly, another couple of years later I was called upon again by the family, this time for the funeral of Max’s widow who had died of a broken heart.

 

Forgive me if I have created the impression that being the chaplain at Carine was all about sadness grief and death. It wasn’t, there were so many good and positive happy memories, which I will write about in another chapter, but these were amongst the most significant and profound experiences  and I wanted to do justice to them.