Other Things I Dream About

In my first semester of teaching at MSU I kept having dreams about one of my students. I dreamt he hung himself. I dreamt he took too many pills. I dreamt he drank too much and choked on his own vomit.

The last day of class, this student wasn't there when I took attendance. I gave the rest of the class a journal topic and sat down and tried not to panic. I tried to convince myself that my dreams were, in fact, just dreams and not prophecy. He'd probably overslept. Maybe he was getting a snack. Maybe he'd run into someone he knew in the hallway.

I got up. I looked out in the hall. He wasn't there. I didn't hear the heavy clop clop clop of sneakers belonging to a boy who was late to class.

I went back inside. I watched my other students write their journal topics and tried not to think about the missing student's first paper. His memoir had been about depression, about too much drinking and too many drugs, about getting messed up with the wrong crowd and doing some bad things until he saw the light.

I was afraid he might've forgotten himself, forgotten that he'd found the light and religion and a different way. I was afraid I hadn't noticed a change in him--a change I could've somehow prevented or helped.

I saw myself standing at his funeral and shaking his parents' hands. I saw myself saying, My God. If only I had known. If only I could've helped.

Just as I was thinking about what I would wear to the funeral and just how I was going to find my way to the small Dakotan town where he came from, there he was. Opening the door. Giving me a lopsided look. Shrugging his shoulders. Flapping his final paper at me.

When we ran into each other at a bar a few semesters later, this student bought me a few drinks and I told him all about my dreams and how I was planning the inevitable trip to South Dakota. He seemed touched. He seemed charmed. He bought me a shot and took me to the counter, where we could play Naked Lady Picture Find on the bar's computer game.

It was such a relief to know he was alive and well, to know that all my students were alive and well and accounted for and living their silly student lives, surviving on animal crackers and watermelon Pucker.

Since then, I haven't really thought about any of my students dying. I didn't have to. Until the other day. Last week one of my former students started seizing and couldn't stop. Her friends took her to the hospital. They waited around until she stabilized. The hospital told them to go on home, that she was going to be fine, that they'd gotten her under control. So they went back to work and school and counted the minutes until they could get back to the hospital to see her again. Then they got the news: her fever had spiked, she'd seized again, she went unconscious and never woke up.

I never gave her a grade. When I knew her, she was a first-semester member of my psychology learning community--the rowdiest class I'd ever had. They all lived in the same hall in the dorm, they took the same classes, they had the same homework. They did everything together. They breathed and worked and shrieked and giggled together.

I never gave this student a grade because she just stopped working. It was mid-semester and she just stopped turning in papers. She said she was sick and sad and still adjusting to college life. She said there was always drama in their hall. Someone was always fighting, and it seemed like she was always in the middle of it. She came into my office with eyes tearing behind her glasses. She asked if she could have a second chance.

I said yes, of course. I said she could take an incomplete and that we could work on the papers she needed to hand in over the course of the next semester. We drew up a plan, a schedule of due-dates, a set of guidelines that she needed to meet in order for me to agree to this incomplete. She signed her name to the set of guidelines and then disappeared from my life.

She would resurface now and again: she slid one, maybe two of the missing papers into my mailbox without coming to talk to me like she was supposed to, without sitting to conference with me like she was required to, and then the papers stopped coming altogether.

I still saw her around school and around the apartment complex where we both lived. I saw her a lot this past spring. It always seemed like she was driving to work right when I was walking to school for the day. I'd always smile at her and she'd always smile at me. I'd always think, Huh. I wonder what she's up to now. I wonder if she ever took care of her comp credit.

She was the last person I saw right before I left my apartment complex for the last time. I handed in my key and parking sticker and walked out, ready to go have a nice cry at Katy's house, where I'd be staying until I felt good and ready to leave Minnesota and drive back to New York. Then there she was, my former student. She was in her car, driving off to work or campus or her boyfriend's house. She looked at me and smiled. I smiled, too. I thought, Her again. I wonder where she's going.

Now her friends are organizing trips to her home state for her funeral. They're caravaning to her hometown, where her family is putting them up, giving them food, taking care of them. Her friends are making webpages in her honor. They're writing about memories and posting pictures. They're leaving messages that talk to her like she's still alive, like she's right there sitting next to them.

It just doesn't seem real. And I would never have guessed that this would happen to her, that I'd be sitting around wondering if I could've been nicer, should've been nicer, if I could've been more supportive, if I could've done something more for her. I keep seeing her bright blond hair in the front row of our classroom in Armstrong Hall. I can hear her voice talking about the boys at the party and all the fun they had. I can see her laughing, laughing, laughing with her friends. I can still see it, can still hear it. I just don't understand it. Not one bit.