Fandom High School

"Hey," Kaidan said. "I know it hasn't been easy these past couple of weeks. Grief never is. Talking about it... well, that can be worse." He glanced around the class. "Some of you haven't even really wanted to, and that's fine. I respect that. It can be hard to open up to another human being, let alone a whole classroom full of them."

He cleared his throat. "That's why this last class is gonna be a little different. None of you are going to have to talk to any human beings if you don't have to, though the floor is open right now if you need to."

After waiting a while and dealing with any people who spoke up, he continued. "Sometimes it can be a big help just to have a pet," he said. "Even if it's just for an hour. It works. They've run tests with this a few times over. So... I'd like to introduce you all to a couple of visitors from the local shelter."

It'd taken some negotiating with April (because he wasn't about to pay five million credits for a 'dog rental') but he'd gotten them anyway: a whole bunch of cats and dogs filtered into the room through the door, kept from dashing after any of the students by a small makeshift kinetic fence Kaidan had set up. There were small ones and big ones, fuzzy ones and nearly hairless ones, puppies and kittens and grown large animals that looked fully capable of hugging you.

He smiled at the class. "Please come forward if you want."

"You've all probably heard about the seven stages of grief at one point or another," Kaidan said. "That's probably the most famous grief model, especially in this particular time. Now, you've got to know up front - these aren't exactly set in stone, and you don't skip from one to the next in any kind of organized way. You might feel some of these things all at the same time, you might loop back to an earlier stage without warning, you might jump forward and back... anyway."

He picked up a marker and walked towards the smartboard. "It's useful to know, though," he said. "Gives you some grip on what's going on with you, you know?" He reached out and wrote on the board, DENIAL.

"Stage one is denial," he said. "Which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. When you're in denial, you don't really accept that whoever you lost is gone. You might know it intellectually - or not - but it doesn't connect emotionally at all. That's usually just the first couple of hours, days... something like that."

He'd been stuck in it a little bit longer, but he wasn't going to share that with the class - not because he didn't want to but because he didn't want to drop his own baggage all over them. "Stage two is Guilt. That's where it starts to really hurt. The loss hits you square across the jaw and you start looking for someone to blame. That's usually yourself, unless you've already gone on to the next stage. What if you'd been faster? What if you'd been stronger? What if you'd been smarter--" He wavered for a moment, but caught himself before it turned into anything besides a slightly overlong pause. "That kind of thing."

He reached for the board again. "Anger is stage three. That's when you start blaming everybody else. People around you, the person themselves for dying, the universe in general for letting them die-- this is when you lash out." He hadn't dealt with a lot of that. He knew too well how dangerous anger could be. "You've got Bargaining in there too. That's when you try to reach out to the powers that be, trying to get back what you lost. Then follows Depression. This actually tends to take place a long while after the loss has taken place. Suddenly all the other emotions kind of disperse and the emptiness hits you square in the face. You might isolate yourself mentally or physically from the people around you. You might start obsessing about the past."

Kaidan rubbed at his arm. "Things'll start getting better eventually. You won't be there yet, but you'll start the reconstruction. Stuff you left laying by the wayside is going to get picked back up. You're gonna start trying to introduce things to your life that you lost along the way, or that you've been missing. Eventually, at the end of the road, you'll make your way to Acceptance. You'll be able to move on, realize the extent of your situation and put it behind you."

With that, the marker got discarded.

"There's a lot of ways to deal with stuff while you're going through all of this," he said. "Exercise helps. Creativity helps. Reaching out to your friends, if they can understand what you're going through. And sometimes you just have to take a day off. Just don't start drinking yourself to death."

"Hey," Kaidan greeted the class. "Come in, get settled."

They were probably going to do that anyway, Alenko.

"Thanks to everyone who turned in their tests last week. And... thanks to anyone who filled it in at all, even if you got rid of it. It's good to start talking about this." His therapist told him that, anyway. "Today we're going to be talking about the influence of diversity on the ways we cope. Environment, ethnicity, gender, it all factors into how we handle grief."

His eyes briefly flitted past Cade. "'Cause we all deal with that differently," he said. "Even in married couples, you'll see that one half will deal differently than the other, leading to friction."

He took to the whiteboard. "The books generally recognize four major influences on the grieving process," he said. "First, culture and ethnicity. Every culture has a different relationship with loss: how long you're supposed to mourn, how men and women are supposed to react, coping strategies, extended family. It all factors in." He wrote that one down.

"Second, gender. Now, some old research specifically states that women are more likely to be the caregivers, while men deal with the pragmatic details. But that's just averages. In some cases, these kind of averages might even lead to expectations that muddle our ability to grieve. So I don't want to focus on that one too much, but... if you want to, we can talk about it." He jotted it down.

"Religion, obviously," he said, writing it out. "Our beliefs and what spiritual support we think we can expect. Religion serves as kind of an anchor to a lot of people. That changes their grieving process. And finally, there's family beliefs. Each family has its own way of looking at the world. Each family expects a certain kind of grieving process from its members."

He turned back towards the class.

"Today, I want you guys to talk about what factors you think are at play in your own background. You can be as detailed or as vague as you want, but sharing helps."

The great advantage to datapads over paper is that you didn't look so stupid or awkward casting glances at a datapad as you did, say, rummaging through papers. So... there was that.

Kaidan wasn't really in his element here, facing a bunch of teenagers, expected to talk about something that wasn't rerigging shields or blowing things up. That was gonna be... well, he'd see what it was gonna be like. He didn't quite manage a smile for the class as they came in-- as a teacher, he figured he could get away with that.

"Good morning," he greeted. "Welcome to Coping with Loss. I'm Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko, Systems Alliance. Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to talk with you guys about grief and... how to handle it."

He took a glance down at his datapad before continuing. "Grief is a normal part of the emotional experience of most species," he said. "It's a brand of emotional suffering that, uh, happens when you lose someone, sometimes even something. You can grieve over a lost relationship or your own health just as much as you can grieve over someone's death."

He touched the desk, mostly for the sake of something to do. "There are a lot of myths about the process," he said. "Like that the pain is supposed to fade if you just ignore it for long enough. Trust me on that - it's just gonna keep coming back worse and worse until you deal with it. Ignoring it doesn't make you strong or capable, it just makes you stupid. It'll creep up on you when you need it least and mess with your head."

Okay. Maybe he didn't need to rely entirely on his datapad for this.

"Being 'strong' isn't always the right way. It might not even be the natural way. You're gonna go through a lot of emotions, sadness, fear, loneliness. Maybe you'll need to cry, maybe you won't, it's different for everybody. But... don't just push it aside. It's no good to anyone."

Kaidan scraped his throat. "Anyway, enough about that," he said. "This is the first class, so... introductions. Tell me your name, your class, and something about something you've grieved about."