I stared blankly at the board in front of me, ignoring everything else. When the class counselor walked in the room and called my name, I looked up suddenly, and the class was silent. In the past few weeks I’d gotten to know her well, and I’d been in her office several times before. This time though, I had no idea what she needed from me. As we walked down the hall she asked me how I was. I said I was fine, and she nodded. I never faced her, I just walked straight ahead.
We turned the corner and she asked me to step into a small room I’d never been in before. Inside, a young woman was sitting with a clipboard. There was a whole list of names I couldn’t see, but beside them, I was able to make out a few checkmarks, and extra general information.
The young woman looked sad, like she pitied me. She asked me how I’d been the past couple of weeks. I said I was good. She asked me if I was sure, and I nodded. I didn’t know why I was here, I thought everything was over now. I didn’t want to think about it anymore.
“We want you to be a part of our experimental grievance counseling program,” she asked me, “Would you be willing to sign up?”
I looked at the wall behind her. I couldn’t stand her solemn face– her pity. I hated that more than anything. Now they were going to do some experiment with me? I felt angry, I wanted to leave and tell them that I’d never be a part of it.
But instead I said yes.
The woman moved her lips slightly, as if to smile while still looking sad, and checked off a box. She asked me a few other questions and filled out her clipboard. A few minutes later, I left the room in silence with the counselor.
***
It was the first day they’d call me to participate, and I brought my special folder just for the program. They were going to pull me out of my last class of the day, on every Wednesday.
When the counselor walked in through the door near the end of the day, I knew she would call my name. What I didn’t know was that she’d call someone else’s too. We both stood up, from opposite sides of the room, and he seemed even more surprised than I was. We both knew exactly what this was for.
He squinted, as if he couldn’t believe that someone like me could be eligible to participate in something like this.
We walked out of the class together, and crossed a concrete bridge to the next building, then climbed down a flight of stairs. He asked me what I was there for. I told him and he listened. I asked him the same, and when he told me I listened, and then we kept walking. Both of us had this conversation too many times. We didn’t say anything to each other after, but we offered each other more than any solemn face ever could.
***
There was a table in the center of the room, with a basket filled with construction paper, worksheets, and markers at its center. It was lined with empty plastic chairs, except for one, which the young woman who had the clipboard was sitting in. The faint sounds of cafeteria staff could be heard through the walls, as me, the kid from my class, and a few others who were also selected clustered at the room’s edge. Our class counselor stood by the door.
The woman at the table asked us to sit down, so we each picked our seats. There was a perfect number of chairs for each of us. We were quiet, staring down at our shoes. We sat there with our sad faces, because that was how they expected us to look. We said nothing, because that was what they expected us to say.
In the coming minutes, the others started nodding and making eye contact with one another, except for me. We were all there for similar reasons, yet I felt like I was the one who stood out.
“You are all here today, because you lost someone you loved,” said the woman, “if you are all comfortable, would you be able to share who you lost, and how you lost them?”
The kid from my class spoke up first. He said his aunt committed suicide.
The next one said his dad died in a construction accident.
Another kid raised his hand and said his dad got hit by a truck.
The kid sitting next to me said that his cousin died. Curious, I thought, as it was well known throughout our school that his dad was a gang member who got shot by a rival.
I told them that my dad had died from an incurable cancer.
I was the only one in the room who experienced a death that was unpreventable.
***
It was our second session, and we sat back in our chairs. Some of the other kids talked to each other before, and I could see that this was really starting to have an impact on them. They seemed to enjoy the conversations, and were getting closer to one another. I stayed silent. The woman said that today we would share a favorite memory that we had of the person we lost.
The other kids thought for a moment, and then started to share. They told us their stories of playing basketball with their cousin, going to the amusement park with their Aunt, and they laughed and smiled. I spent that time trying to think of a favorite memory.
After everyone else had finished sharing, they then asked me. Everyone was looking at me now, waiting for me to share my story.
I told them that I was trying but I couldn’t think of anything. I told them my dad came home late most nights, that in the past few years I hardly saw him. It was true, he would get home after dinner, then spend hours washing the dishes while listening to podcasts. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a lot of great experiences with him though, there were things I could have shared.
They continued along.
I felt isolated in that group. The son of a father who died what now felt like a privileged death, in a circle of experiences I couldn’t understand.
For a little while, I refused to go, and when my friend from the circle left class he always looked at me confused as I stayed put. I couldn’t help but think that those circles were a waste of time for me, being pulled from my life, where I was perfectly content, to then be sent to a room where I had to be sad for an hour. I didn’t want to do it anymore.
After three weeks of me doing this the counselor forced my hand and told me I had to participate. She said I was disrespecting my friends who were also there, and the very idea of the program. I didn’t agree with her, I didn’t think my friends really cared, or the lady with the clipboard either, so going forward I’d walk to the room, then say I had to use the restroom, leave my things, and go outside in the sun.
***
The courtyard was empty as I walked. I wasn’t supposed to be where I was, but I couldn’t be at the circle. I wanted to be anywhere but there. I sat down on the steps outside of the school buildings, wondering about why I was having such a hard time. I didn’t understand why this was so upsetting to me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the outline of a man. He was wearing a bright yellow safety vest, and a graying beard. He wore a cap and moved in stride. I could see him getting closer to me. I assumed my time on the steps was up, and that he was probably going to ask me to get back to my class, or wherever else I needed to be.
He asked me my name, and what I was doing. I explained to him a little, just that I was part of a counseling program and I didn't like spending time there. The man was silent for a moment, then he held out his hand, shaking mine, and sat next to me.
He said his name was Pointer.
I asked him if he spelled it like the word pointer, and he chucked. Apparently, he did.
For about an hour, we talked about ourselves, what kind of things we liked. We debated a lot about sports, as he complained about how bad the Lakers were, and laughed when I told him that at least they weren’t the Clippers.
Eventually, he glanced at his watch and said that school was almost over, and that I needed to get my things. I nodded and said that it was nice talking to him, he said he agreed, and I headed back to the circle.
***
Every Wednesday, when we had our sessions, I would leave and I would talk to Pointer, I would say hello to him if I saw him around the block, or in the school office. We’d talk for hours about things I honestly no longer remember.
We sat on the steps in silence one day, until he turned to me, and asked me,
“Why is it you always come here again?”
I told him it was because I couldn’t handle the circle. It made me sad and upset at the world and a guilt within myself.
How could people look at things like this and say that the people of our country really do have equal opportunities, or the abilities to pursue what they wanted. How could people hear the stories and not start thinking of so many ways these stories could’ve been avoided.
How could I relate to the boy who lost his family member because of gang violence? How could he relate to me?
***
On the final day, the counselor pulled me aside and asked me to go to the final meeting and try to not leave the room for any reason, and I agreed.
As the other kids talked with one another, I realized how much I missed out on. I had nothing to say, because I didn’t know what we did.
After the meeting I looked down the courtyard and saw Pointer, and I went to him, prepared to tell him that I was going to switch schools for high school. It was almost the end of eighth grade, and I was probably never going to see him again.
We talked for a moment, and I said that I would miss him. I thanked him for giving me a place to go. He smiled and said that he wished me the best of luck in the future, and that he'd always be there to support me if I needed it.
I looked back at the building for a minute, the windowless room where the circle was, in a courtyard I would leave forever, with that cafeteria I could hear through the walls during our meetings, that I only saw whenever I had some form of detention.
I didn’t think I’d ever miss it, and I honestly never did. I wanted to be gone from the place that now served as a reminder of my past, and move on to new things far away…
***
I recently came across my old folder from the circle while I was home from college over my spring break, and it made me want to write this piece. I’ve thought a lot about the circle, and written a few things about it in old journals when I was younger every time I thought there was some new lesson or idea that I could learn from it.
I thought that I needed that circle, because what I’d learned from it in years that followed were limited, and so I felt I should have been there and participated. Later on, I’d always wondered if leaving the circle the way I did was the first mistake in my grieving process.
Refusing to allow myself to dwell on pain wasn’t a form of moving on, it was simply a much more dangerous version of denial, in which I denied myself my own humanity.
But I didn’t deny the circle because I didn’t believe it or that I was somehow above it. I left it because it wasn’t right for me, and that it simply didn’t work. It didn’t make me feel better, instead I left the meetings sad and defeated.
And when I least expected it, it was a man who found me when I wanted to be left alone that was able to reach me in a way no one else in the circle had, or any therapist or counselor could.
A man named Pointer.
A man who never forced me to talk about my feelings or things I didn’t want to discuss. Rather, he pointed me in the direction inside myself, when I was a boy becoming a man without a father.
I believed for so long that we were all equal in death, then I believed the idea that all were equal in death, but not all deaths were equal. Death doesn’t work like that though— it’s arbitrary, without equality nor discrimination to those who face it.
For those who experience it, it's not the death but the grief that follows that is more equal than anything, as we look to regain our footing in the aftermath. As we reconcile with a new reality. Grief is a feeling I best speak in silence, and a story I tell only when I feel the time is right for me.
When I used to think of myself at fourteen, where I was angry, aimless and sad, I wished I could have given him a circle.
Now, I’m glad that he ran away and chose his own path, as he sat at the steps watching the sky, just to look to his side, and find a pointer.
This is so beautiful, Archer. Your ability to honestly self-reflect and articulate your feelings touched me deeply. There’s much here about how adults misunderstand how to hold grief. I am so glad you found your pointer when you needed it.
Very beautiful. I was an adult, only a handful of years older than you are now, when my mom died. But I realize I handled it the way you did. But without a Pointer. I think groups like that make me feel even more isolated because they do actually help people. And I don’t at all understand or relate to that, since it’s not the sort of thing that would help me. I’ve only recently, pushing 40, started to occasionally even think about testing that hypothesis when it comes to my comfort zone and what I know wont help so why bother. Sometimes the help is in something other than planned curriculum or group convo. It might be a connection you make or a realization you have or even something beautiful or awful someone else says that just sticks with you. Idk. It’s still hard to do.