Election Section

At Berkeley High School, students usually congregate on campus and in the park to laugh, eat lunch and make plans for the weekend. But for many Berkeley High students, recent gatherings include memorials, funerals and grief support groups, as they come t o grips with the accidental deaths of two popular students. 

Nic Rotolo and Miguel Caicedo passed away last month in two separate accidents, Rotolo in a hockey game, and Caicedo in a traffic accident. Their untimely deaths have left a huge void in the liv es of their family members, as well as their friends.  

But after the memorials are over, students are left on their own to grieve for their friends. Family members are seen as survivors and are supported in their grief, but classmates are expected to mov e on more quickly.  

Berkeley High students are fortunate to have a health center that offers grief support, but students in private schools in the area don’t have these services.  

Students throughout the city are grieving with one another the best way t hey can—sharing funny stories about their friends, wearing sweatshirts with their classmate’s picture emblazoned on them, and making bracelets out of hockey shoestrings in remembrance of the hockey player who died. Some of them are just hanging out togeth er, wondering what to do with this huge void in their lives.  

Oftentimes, some parents aren’t even aware of how a classmate’s death has affected their child. What does grief look like in teenagers? Grief can be complex and unique to every teenager, and t he needs of the bereaved teenager have been overlooked for decades. It is hard to teenagers to receive – or know who to ask for – support when they are grieving. While teenagers might look like men or women, they’re not. And they need consistent and compa ssionate support as they grieve.  

So how can parents understand the unique ways in which teenagers grieve? According to an article by Dr. Alan Wolfelt, author, educator and director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition, " Bereaved teens give out al l kinds of signs that they are struggling with complex feelings, yet they are often pressured to act as if they are doing better than they really are." While they are working towards their independence and looking toward the future, teenagers are experiencing a sense of loss while they break away from their parents and seek to gain a sense of their own independence. The experience of a classmate’s death compromises this normal development, and makes teenagers vulnerable to stress.  

For teenagers, common grief reactions include confusion, depression, shock, guilt and anger. While adults feel an immediate intensity of loss and experience grief for long periods of time, teenagers can experience very brief grief reactions several times a day. Parents can observe, for example, if their kid may not be sick, but might want to stay home from school just to curl up in bed. Give them permission to grieve. They need the stability and presence of their parents and other caring adults. 

A simple hug or a few minutes to talk to a teenager never hurts, either. Give them time to work through their grief, as well as keeping them involved in activities they enjoy. For teenagers who like to write, give them journals to express their thoughts. Art supplies and music are als o excellent tools to help teens cope with their grief. 

Books and websites that parents might find helpful in supporting their teenagers through the grief process are: I Will Remember You: A Guidebook Through Grief for Teens (L. Dower); Part of Me Died, T oo. Stories of Creative Survival Among Bereaved Children and Teenagers , (V. Fry); The Dougy Center website, www.dougy.org; and www.bereavedfamilies.ca/Library/Teenage 

_Grief. 

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