School copes with deep loss

By Jerry Sena

jtsena@wataugademocrat.com

Even before the classmates of three sisters killed in a house fire last Thursday night began arriving for school on Friday morning, administrators and staff at Cove Creek Elementary were preparing to meet them with the news.

By 8 a.m., principal Mike Sherrill had already spoken with officials at the county Board of Education and arranged for counselors from throughout the district to serve as reinforcements for Cove Creek counselor Lindsey Gough.

Gough and Sherrill met with teachers before the beginning of classes to hash out a crisis plan that none could have expected they’d ever need.

“Any time you have a crisis, all schools have a crisis plan to draw on,” Sherrill said. “While no two crises are the same, there’s really no way to prepare for something like this.”

Fire investigators still haven’t discovered what may have caused the fire just before midnight last week. But no technical explanation can soothe the fears and answer the questions likely to arise among many of the surviving classmates of kindergartener Clarita Flores,  first-grader Dacy and second-grader Lilianna.

Gough is in her second year as a school counselor, but no amount of experience could ease the task that awaited her that morning.

“They don’t teach this in college,” said Gough, who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s in school counseling. This is her first year at Cove Creek and she said she’s grateful to have the support of the staff at her new school at such a challenging time.

“It’s a great school and a great staff,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to get through this without them.”

Getting through it began with a staff meeting last Friday morning before students arrived for class.

Gough said their first priority was to somehow address the tragedy in ways that made sense to the wide range of ages attending the school.

Cove Creek has classes from pre-kindergarten through middle school, and depending on their age and emotional development, Gough said, children have vastly different concepts of death.

“Older kids, you can talk to about death,” she said. “They’ve already had a chance to think of what death is about.”

The younger children, she said, may not even be aware of what’s happened quite yet.

Joey Dickson, a licensed clinical therapist with New River Behavioral Healthcare in Boone, agrees.

“Around kindergarten, kids are just starting to develop a better sense that death is permanent,” he said.

Dickson said smaller children might even think their classmates will be returning.

“They may have the idea that everything will return to normal soon, back to the way they were.”

Gough said, to address these issues, her school is encouraging all the children to add their own  creations to a memorial tree for the three girls.

The memorial tree is beneficial to all the children because it appeals to their differing concepts of death and grieving.

“Older kids can benefit from contributing,” Gough said. “It’s helpful for them to write a message on a leaf or a flower – something to look at and remind them of their classmates.”

Making cards for the grieving family, compiling a memorial, helping to raise funds – all appeal to older children and help them work through the loss, she said.

The memorial tree helps the younger kids as well, she added, by serving as a reminder of the tragedy.

“The loss takes time to register with the younger kids,” Gough said. For that reason, they’ll be leaving the tree up for two or three weeks, to allow the reality to take hold.”

Some parents may prefer to go on as if nothing has happened. But Gough and Dickson agree that, tempting as it may be, avoiding the subject is not a good idea.

“It is a good idea to have a preemptive discussion with kids,” Dickson said. “Talk to them openly and honestly about what happened. Tell them how you feel so they know they’re not alone in how they feel. They will have lots of questions. They may ask them over and over and over.”

Gough said the diversity of world views among their students’ families has encouraged the Cove Creek staff to keep it simple as well, and leave the philosophizing to the parents.

In a school of about 300 students, sensitivity is necessary; in that spirit, Sherrill let students and staff leave school early on Tuesday — the girls’ memorial service was scheduled that afternoon.

But Wednesday is another school day, to be followed by many more. Gough and Sherrill are well aware of that and have already begun looking beyond last week’s tragedy toward the inevitable return to life as usual.

One way to promote that will come in the form of a visit from local firemen, who will educate kids on fire safety as part of Fire Prevention Month.

Learning to prevent fires is one way to help children cope with any fears that their families, too, might be victimized by tragedy.

“Kids will have so much fear they’re going to bring home with them,” Gough said. “Showing them how they can keep fires from happening will help to empower them.”