Cristi.
I’ve dealt with loss in my life. Perhaps a lot more than most people of 22 years. I’ve probably been to more wakes than many will go to in their entire lives.
But nothing prepares you for the news I received yesterday.
One of my 4th form students killed himself.
A ten year old. Cristi. He took a telephone cord and he hung himself.
Ten years old.
Over twenty-four hours later and I have far from come to terms with this. I mean, will I ever? Ten. To conceive of ending your own life at that age. To be so unhappy that you don’t want to continue living.
I admit I didn’t know Cristi all that well. It’s difficult to really get to know your students as individuals in a class of 24 that you teach for 45 minutes twice a week. I come in at the bell, teach, and leave. Sure, I run into my students at their dance performances, or while out for a walk, but I’ve only been teaching here three months.
He was quiet. Not in a way that concerned me. He was just more reserved than some of his classmates, who rush to hug me when I enter the door, who shove their homework books in my face to see if they’ve earned a star for their work. He did his thing quietly.
I know Cristi lived with just his grandmother and some siblings. When the vice director came in to ask who lived with just one parent or no parents at home, he was the only one to raise his hand for having no parents at home. This is extremely common here in Moldova. Most of my students have at least one parent working abroad, trying to send money home to feed their children. I have sixteen year olds that are the heads of their households.
Cristi was gone from school for about two weeks. I asked his classmates where he was but no one seemed to really know. He returned on Thursday. I asked him if he was sick. He just smiled. It was the last I saw of him.
Of course, after the initial stages of shock, I was overcome with guilt. That’s just who I am. I am one of the adult figures in his life. My mind immediately went to thinking if there were any signs I missed. Why didn’t I further investigate why he wasn’t at school?
The more that has come to light, though, the more and more helpless I feel. Helpless in Cristi’s case, but more so, helpless within this culture and this society.
Cristi’s grandmother, apparently, drinks heavily. He is left with his four siblings in a dilapidated house, one that was shown on the news today, without even a door. His parents drink too, and apparently when his father does come home from Moscow, he has been known to beat the children.
Like parents working abroad, this alcoholism and child abuse is far from uncommon. But people just seem to turn a blind eye. It seems to be common knowledge, but no one does anything. People just nonchalantly say, ‘Oh yes, her father drinks and beats his family,’ and that’s that. There isn’t any child protection services to call. It’s just viewed as part of life, someone else’s business to not be meddled with.
I came to school this morning expecting the atmosphere to be different. Perhaps we’d all meet and talk about it. In America, that’s what we’d do. We’d have a memorial service. There would be psychologists or people for students to talk to.
Nothing. Nothing at all. Students and teachers alike didn’t even seem to be aware. My partner teacher asked me if I had heard. I asked her if the school would do something. ‘What, like collect money?’ she asked. ‘No, I mean, like some sort of service or something for him…’ ‘Oh, no, we don’t do that here.’
Not only do they not do that, but in the Orthodox church, suicide is viewed as a sin, and thus Cristi is going to be buried without a ceremony and without a cross on the outside of the cemetery like an animal.
As hard as it is to come to terms with Cristi’s death, it has been harder for me to deal with, well, how people are dealing with it. I first got the news sitting at the table with members of my extended family, one of whom is a policeman and thus was one of the first to be called. Everyone expressed some level of shock, and then we continued with our meal. I tried to act in accordance, as I always do. But after two more hours of sitting there, I couldn’t take it any more. I excused myself and went outside to call another volunteer. She told me, ‘Kerry, there comes a point where you need to be yourself.’
It’s true. I feel like sometimes I give up a part of myself trying to be a part of this culture. But I need to grieve the way I need to grieve. I went back inside, let the tears go that I had been wanting to cry, and told them I couldn’t stop thinking about Cristi and needed to go home.
But who am I to tell someone else how to grieve? If this is how Moldovans deal with things - to mostly dismiss it and let life go on - then that’s how they are going to deal with it. Americans are often accused by other cultures of being too emotional. You can say that’s the case, but I think it’s necessary. I think humans are made to talk about things, not to act as if they didn’t happen. I don’t think our memorial services are a big show, but something necessary for us to cope and to address what happened and to grieve. And this is coming from a person who admittedly not the most open with her feelings and tends to bottle things up.
Again, I think I can attribute this way of dealing to Moldova’s past and to their current societal situation. People were taken to labor camps in Siberia without warning and never seen from or heard from again. Children did and do die from hunger. Women disappear into the hands of sex traffickers by the dozens every day. Moldovans’ lives were and are filled with hardships the likes that most of us will fortunately never have to face. Perhaps for them it’s easier to put aside sorrow and grief and just keep working and trying to live with what they have, and to stay with the living.
I understand this, to a point, but it still didn’t make it any easier to see how life at school had just seamlessly gone on as if nothing at all had happened. To see his classmates in the halls of his school building dancing, to see the primary school teachers laughing at their normal gossip post. Maybe it’s good they can just put things aside and let life go on, but I don’t know, I just can’t subscribe to that in my own life.
But this has become more about me and less about Cristi. So please, try to remember this boy, and to pray for him, and to hope that someone comes around and allows him a proper burial. And pray for his classmates and the people around him that they are able to find the help they may not know they need. And pray for all the children of Moldova, who are left without parental figures in their lives, or who live with alcoholic or abusive family members, or who, at the age of ten, think that life is no longer living.
Rest in Peace, Cristi.