Afasari, Gone

Afasari lived two buildings away from ours. He used to play in the courtyard with my son and the other children in our complex. He was older than my son by 3 years, but my son was tall and Afasari was a scrawny kid, so it never really dawned that they were different ages. He was a wild child, the one always careening around the courtyard on a borrowed bike or scooter, doing wheelies and other stunts, never wearing a helmet. He was East Indian, with burnished amber skin and an unruly thatch of shiny black hair. He had two sisters who never seemed to come outside. But Afasari was always in the courtyard, sitting alone on the benches or bouncing his basketball on the asphalt. He drew the other kids out of their homes because there was always someone out there with whom to get the party started.

My most vivid memory of Afasari is not one that makes me happy to recall. My son's friend Eugene was visiting us on a playdate. He and my son were 9. Afasari was 12. The three of them were downstairs in the courtyard playing, and Afasari was being very mean to Eugene, denying him the ball, calling him names, trying to exclude him. I think he resented him as an outsider. Finally, my son had had enough of it and suggested he and Eugene go upstairs to our apartment. When they came in, I looked at the boys crestfallen expressions and asked what was wrong. They told me Afasari had been making fun of Eugene. I marched the two boys back downstairs to the courtyard, where Afasari was still bouncing the basketball. He was alone now. I went over to Afasari and told him he needed to apologize to Eugene. Stunned and chastened, he did. He was really all bravado and fake toughness and not at all beyond deferring to a mother figure. The three boys decided to resume their game.

Then, the summer he was 13, Afasari announced that he was going away. His said his mom was sending him to live with his aunt in New Jersey. His mom was a single mother who worked long hours, and she didn't like that he was alone so much. He wasn't happy about moving, but what could he do, he shrugged. That was the last I heard of him. Until this weekend.

In fact, Afasari had moved back home in his late teens. I never ran into him in the neighborhood, so I didn't know. Maybe I wouldn't have recognized him. He had grown extremely tall and was very thin, with a mustache. I probably would not have realized it was him.

Sadly, on Sunday afternoon at about 3:30 pm, right as my mom and I were getting money from the bank ATM around the corner, just after we put our son on the bus back to college, Afasari climbed to the roof of one of the 21-storey buildings in our complex and jumped.

Many people saw. My friend who lives in the building he jumped from, was in the laundry room and heard a loud thud. Loud enough to make her run outside. There she found one of her neighbors, a tiny, elderly woman, shaking and screaming, "He just jumped! He just jumped!" My friend ran to her neighbor and put her arms around her, but was careful not to look where she was pointing. Already the security guards were running to Afasari, but it was too late.

Later, I heard that he had been battling depression for years. I felt so sad that I had never known that, and that I had never seen behind the scrappy wild child to the boy who must already have been hurting inside. I wondered if that day when he was being mean to Eugene he was really wrestling with his own bad feelings, and my towering over him and insisting he apologize was just one more moment when he felt dominated, buffeted by life. I wonder if there was another way I could have handled it, or if I should even have inserted myself at all.

I don't know that anything I did could have changed anything, but I'm so sorry that I never even knew to try.

Falling Child

At The Dalton School, a storied private school on the Upper East Side, an eleventh grader fell to his death at 11:15 a.m. today. Reports say he opened a window in the unoccupied dance studio on the 11th floor of the school and jumped. Children were playing on the sidewalk when he fell. They scattered, screaming, mercifully unhurt. His mother, who lives a few blocks away, ran to the scene and broke down. I cannot even imagine what this must have been like for her. To even try to picture it lacerates the heart.

Apparently, he was a kid who won awards, a mathematician, a football player, track and field athlete, and website whiz. His name isn't on the news yet, but all over Facebook, hauntingly like the last time this happened, those who knew him or knew of him are bidding him "R.I.P." And they call him by name.

My God, how tragic that youngsters, 17 tender years old, can be so convinced that life will never get any better than the dark moment they are living through. What psychic demons must have taken hold? This also kicks up echoes for the students at my daughter's school, who lived through their own sorrow a short month ago.

I understand that on the street outside of Dalton, where he fell, candles and flowers and tributes are a spreading testament to the fact that this boy's life was so much more prized than he, in his last moments, knew.

Rest in peace, Teddy Graubard.

Ripple Effects

This young man's suicide ripples out to touch everyone. How bleak the day seems. At my daughter's school, teachers wept openly, a boy broke down in Physics class, a girl recalled her friend's last phone call and wondered if maybe he was really saying goodbye. 

I want so much to know what was in his heart and mind that night, what drove him off that ledge into the darkness, but I don't actually know this child, so perhaps I will never understand. Those who did know him, clearly loved him. They say he was funny, kind, helpful, a brother to the end, but what kind of sorrow must have seeped into him? Was his final act just a rash impulse that he couldn't call back, or had he planned to do this? My son tells me gently: "Mom, get used to it. You won't ever know." And maybe he's right. So all I can do is beam prayers for healing to his parents, his brothers, his friends. Especially to his parents. Their pain is unimaginable.

I find myself hugging my children a lot. My daughter and her friend from middle school are in the kitchen baking cupcakes from scratch. Their friendship is so familiar and uncomplicated. Their chatter soothes me. My son has midterm exams this week, biochemistry and Spanish tomorrow. As usual in the evenings, he is stretched out on the living room couch dozing in front of the TV. I rub his head as I pass by, and I don't even tell him to go study.

Lost Boy

An 11th grader from my daughter's school, an Asian kid who was in her Spanish class, jumped from the roof of his building last night, a suicide. The news spread through the students' Facebook/ phone text/ IM network like wildfire, with a long line of Facebook statuses saying simply "R.I.P."

I asked my daughter what this kid had been like. She said, "Quiet. He always seemed tired. He always put his head down on the desk in class. I mean, he had friends, kids liked him. But he was quiet."

Why don't we ever see tragedy in the making?

There will be psychologists and grief counselors in attendance tomorrow as the students file back into school. There's even a meeting for the parents at 6:30 p.m. None of it will bring this kid, Chris Chin was his name, I feel that I should name him, say he was here, none of it will bring heartbroken Chris Chin back from the edge of that building.

Rest in peace.