Funeral for a fifteen year old

You see, no one in teacher school ever prepares you for the day when one of your freshmen students is killed in a car accident. You get a call in the middle of the night. Then you don't sleep, and you get out of your tortured bed and you get ready to go to school and you aren't sure how you are going to handle your own grief and face your grieving students. In a school of one hundred and twenty, if you aren't friends with this girl, you at least know who she is. There are no counselors at the school to help you, and advise you in how to face these young people. The counselors arrive later for the students, but still no one has advised you about how to cope with it all. You ask the administrator if you are supposed to act in a normal fashion, and he sees you are pretty broken up, so he says to try to keep things as normal as possible, show a movie. Later he makes sure the school counselor checks up on you periodically, you know for support. There is some comfort in knowing neither drugs nor alcohol were involved. The kids were four wheeling and something just went horribly wrong. I'd like to think she was having fun on a beautiful day, and that's the last thing she knew. And still, come sixth period and there is the empty chair. Yesterday I attended a funeral for a fifteen year old.