"This was a hard week for me. And I won't even refer to the two communications which came this week and which were the hardest for me to accept and handle. Rather I will focus on the death, possibly suicide, of Michael Grant Cahoon.
I have no notes on Monday. I expect I was still recovering from the disappointment regarding the meeting at Texas A&M University at Galveston regarding Galveston Futures (0709.html). I recall it was about 3:00 in the afternoon before there was any question about my day in Galveston. The question came from Mike Dunn, who was sympathetic and came across as if he expected the kind of result I received from my meetings. Oh well!
Tuesday morning I first read this e-mail from Melanie:
Tuesday evening one of the members of the Bishopric called to see if he could meet with me. He came over to the house about 7:30 PM for the purpose of exploratory questions regarding having me be the assistant 11 year old Blazer Scout Leader. The current leader is not doing his calling, and they need to get a mentor for the teacher. My response, of course, was I will do whatever I am called to do. It turns out his son was one of my scouts, when I was working in the Young Men's organization years ago. Also, his son was sent home early from his mission. During the conversation, it came out that shortly after their son came home, the Stake President visited, and after beating around the bush for quite a while, asked if he was angry at Youth Leaders who had not taught his son correctly. This was the first time I had correlated this Stake President's thoughts about about Youth Leader performance with me. It clicked, and it hurt, and at the appropriate time it needs to be explored in more depth directly with the individuals involved. After the Bishopric member left, Andrea and I watched an episode of 'The Unit' which Andrea had watched before, and which I had seen the last portion of, but did not have the beginning context.
Wednesday morning Andrea called about 9:00 to tell me about Michael Grant Calhoon's death, and how it appeared he had thrown himself in front of a bus to commit suicide. Coming on top of the previous night's revelation about Youth Leaders, and given my excessive ego, I could not help but correlate Michael's death with mistakes I have made. I wondered if my sacrament meeting talk, where I mentioned the night I considered suicide (../9835.html), had placed the thought in Michael's mind. The next couple of hours were really hard for me. It was an emotional meltdown, where my mind started going in negative circles and I was blaming myself for other people's choices and I could feel myself loosing control. My mind jumped to other times this has happened. I recalled vividly the night we had a TV special play a woman survivor of the holocaust screaming in our living room in Dallas, and my completely loosing self control for a couple of hours, screaming, pacing, putting my fist through my Warsaw guitar, and having an emotional breakdown over seeing this dramatization in my living room. Dr. Nancy White told me she thought this had something to do with something that happened when I was a very young baby, before I could speak, and that the images brought back the memory of this event. I thought of all of the times I have reverted to food to combat when there were emotional experiences I did not know how to handle. At 11:30 I stopped the work I was doing, and went for my 54 flight stair walk, hoping this would get my mind off of it's downward spiral. One of my thoughts as I walked was that it seems like these things which are so emotionally damaging to me tend to precede some kind of good news. By the time I finished walking, and after reading from the book I've been reading in the car pool and at lunch (State of the World - 2004), I was able to get my mind back on work and to stop the emotional meltdown. In fact, I focused on work so much it was about 3:30 before I checked the e-mail sent to the house, when I noticed an e-mail received at 12:55 PM, just after I finished my walk and lunch time reading. This e-mail said was from Jan Miller and said:
This was the first response from Jan Miller since submitting my proposal by e-mail on 26 June 2006 and the hard copy version on 15 July 2006. I had called on 07 Sep 2006, 11 Oct 2006, 15 Nov 2006, 16 Jan 2007, 15 Feb 2007, 16 Feb 2007, 27 Feb 2007, 01 Mar 2007, 05 Mar 2007, and 06 Mar 2007, with the only really encouraging conversation being 15 Feb 2007 (0707.html). This e-mail definitely pulled me out of my emotional meltdown, and made me feel like my life might be worth something after all, even if I have failed at those things most important to me. I wrote a response, and decided, even though Andrea has been quite negative about this project, and it has been the cause of some of our most serious disagreements, I should let Andrea review my response before I sent it. I don't know if her edits were needed or not, and I went along with them. This is the response I sent:
Thursday started out with me being excited about the work I was doing for Geokinetics. This lasted for a couple of hours. Mike Schoemann and I had talked about how I could make some progress with the project I am working on, and I went after each of the specific opportunities we discussed. It took a couple of hours to come to dead ends on all sides, and I found myself waiting on the process again. So I told Mike I was going to give up and work on another project. He said there was nothing else I could do until the current migration finished. So I started working on 'An Open Mind,' and specifically building a table of the various God's of Mankind, as defined by key religions. Thursday evening I mowed the lawn, which was a good thing because the Homeowner's Association sent an e-mail telling me to mow the lawn which arrived on Friday. For what it is worth, Andrea had asked me not to mow the lawn until the new sod had taken root.
Friday I continued to work on the table after getting a haircut on the way home. Finished it the key draft Friday evening during the movie 'The Last Train to Gun Hill' and a new episode of 'Numb3rs.' Andrea and I left the house about 11:30 to picked up Matt at Hobby Airport at 12:55 AM. I-10 was closed, and so we took the Grand Parkway to I-59, then went to I-610, then to I-45, down Broadway to Hobby, and arrived right at 12:55 AM.
We were up early in Saturday morning, especially considering it was after 2:00 AM by the time we got to sleep, in order to get ready for Michael Grant Cahoon's funeral. It is a long drive to The Woodlands, especially when I-10 is closed. Clay Road was backed up. And we still made it to the LDS Chapel in the Woodlands about an 75 minutes before the funeral. The first folks we saw when we got inside were Ryan, Michael's brother who is Paul's age and went on his mission shortly after Paul, and Wanawan Cahoon. They are in our ward, and Wanawan teaches primary with me. I knew it was going to be a hard day based on how hard and how long Wanawan hugged me. Same with Ryan. Michael Grant Cahoon had a lot of make-up on. It hurt to see him lying in a coffin. Luana also grabbed hold and did not want to let go. Then Reynolds bear hugged me and did not want to let go. His comment was, 'Roice, you have always been such a good and true friend.' I did not feel like he was blaming me for his son's death, and this is when I expect Wednesday's emotional meltdown disappeared. Reynold's needed to talk, and he went through the last three days of Michael's life with me in detail. I came away from the conversation with reasonable doubt as to whether this was a suicide or not, and whether when Michael ran around the corner he was just running too fast and did not see the bus. I felt it was good we were there.
Matt was in his dress uniform. It was fun to watch people recognize him and their interaction with him. Coleen Cahoon is engaged, and I think it was very hard for Matt to get this news. We made our way to the chapel, and sat in the center in the first row behind the family seats. Andrea told me this was the same chapel where they had the service for Larry Law. And this would have been the chapel Todd and Michelle Stahlei attended. I couldn't help but reflect on the ties between this chapel and our chapel on Norwalk drive. We had almost an hour of meditation before the service started. The service was very nice.
The the cover for the program for Michael Grant Cahoon's funeral is to the right, and on the inside it said:
I remember playing chess with Michael Cahoon when we went to Big Bend National Park on a High Adventure (../0222.html). I remember playing the guitar at his Eagle Court of Honor (../0245.html). They had the program from Michael Grant Cahoon's Eagle Court of Honor on display next to the coffin, with my name there in black and white. The depth of my emotional involvement with the proceedings is shown by the fact I wrote four possible stanzas for Prime Words during the funeral Service at the Glen Loch Chapel in The Woodlands, based on comments by (a) Ryan Cahoon, (b) Cynthia Gilbert, (c) Bishop Sid Mann, and (d) Stake President Tolman:
After the service we stood outside and talked to friends who had driven up to The Woodlands for about a half-an-hour. We could not go to the graveside service because I needed to be back for Christian Larsen's baptism. Again it was fun to see reactions to how Matt has grown up, and it was fun to see him interacting with members of Nottingham Country Ward. I was a little nervous about getting back on time, especially as we had to stop and get gas. We actually had a hard time finding a service station, and when we did it was backed up. We got back in time to drive past the Pig Race place on Baker Road, and to get to the house by 2:10 PM. I left for the baptism at 2:15 PM.
I had several props, which I was able to set up prior to the baptismal service starting. The program for Christian Larsen's baptism said:
My talk followed the basic outline I had put together. I did only use the first quote from 'On Walden Pond,' mostly because I was having a hard time keeping Christian's attention. Oh well! I think the talk went OK, and here is the talk as I wrote it out last Sunday afternoon:
Andrea had Matt bring her to the church and she arrived after the baptism and before my talk. She was Christan's Primary Teacher when she taught Sunbeams. Christian's Dad performed the ordinances, and is a Bishop up north someplace. We had a nice conversation. On the way home Andrea had some very nice words to say about my talk, about how well I relate to the kids, how I talk to them as a kid, how much difference I make in their lives (specifically referring to the hug Shannon Conners gave me when we were at the funeral earlier in the day), and how it really doesn't matter if I ever build my city or not because of this difference. It still matters to me. The following photos were taken by Sister Larsen and sent to Andrea and I as e-mails:
At 5:30 PM Andrea, Matt, and I were back to the Relief Society Room to attend an Eagle Court of Honor for Jay Rainsdon and Andrew Salt. Matt Feil gave the Eagle Charge and Floyd Lunt gave the Eagle Award Presentation. I found it particularly rewarding to see Matt Feil lead out in this Eagle Court of Honor. He was in the first young men's group I worked with when we moved to Nottingham Country Ward. He left the church, married, divorced, and was working construction in Salt Lake before he married Tiffany Jones, moved back to Houston, and now they are expecting their third child. Maybe I am not a failure on all accounts after all. And maybe most of what I beat myself up about has little to do with me, and a lot to do with other people's choices. I wrote three possible stanzas for Prime Words at the Court of Honor, which was held in the Relief Society Room at the church on Saturday evening, 10 March 2007, quoting from (a) Marvin Rainsdon, who was quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, (b) Steve Salt, and (c) Matt Feil:
Our Matt was in the Eagle's Nest. He did not plan ahead enough to put his uniform back on. After the Court of Honor he went to the mall with his friend Andrew. Andrea and I went to Cinemark and watched 'Amazing Grace,' a movie about England creating laws to abolish supporting the slave trade. It is a good historical movie. Kids probably would not like it, and I think it would be good for all 10 of you and your spouses to see. I went to bed and fell asleep before Matt got home.
Sacrament meeting was good. There were a lot of people not there because of the early change to Daylight Savings Time. Greg Branning's comments seemed particularly powerful to me. Then in Primary Sharing Time, my former student Morgan Bancroft gave the talk. It was a good talk, and when I thought she was through she said 'I need two volunteers.' Almost all of the kids put their hands up. She selected Evi Davis and Rachel Sarlls (who is in my class). When they got to the front, Morgan got down from the podium and went to the chalk board where she pointed to a drawing and said 'This is obviously a shovel,' pointed to another drawing and said 'And this is obviously a hole in the ground. We are going to take your sins and bury them in this hole. Evi, what sin have you committed this morning?' Evi could not think of anything she had done wrong at 9:25 AM after an hour of Sacrament Meeting on this the first morning of daylight savings time. Morgan kept pushing her, and finally got frustrated and said: 'Well, I'll just make up some sins, or write about some of mine. I yelled at my brother this morning.' Then she unsuccessfully attempted to get Rachel to confess to a big sin this morning. Since this didn't work, she asked for some more volunteers, and everyone's hand went up again. This time she said she needed to pick boys, because they make more mistakes. I couldn't hear what the boys confessed to doing, but Morgan diligently wrote it down in the hole. There was a space at the bottom of the hole, and she said, 'I need one more volunteer to fill up the rest of this whole.' All the kids raised their hands again. And Morgan pointed at Sister Davis and said 'What sin did you commit this morning?' Sister Davis was quite taken back, and she said with a timid voice, 'I didn't read the scriptures this morning.' Morgan was satisfied with this, wrote it down, drew dirt on top of the whole, and drew a flower growing out of the whole. Then she bore her testimony about how we all need to be like the Lamanites who buried their weapons of war, and bury our sins. None of the teachers showed any expression. I thought it was hilarious. Here is a strong eight year old calling the ward to repentance. I'm glad she didn't ask me to confess my sins.
I took a long nap after a big spaghetti dinner. Then it was time for choir. We took a key to Scott Miner to take in our mail and paper while we are at Disney World (0711.html). Our Home Teachers, Tim Gebauer and Andrew Salt, the new Eagle Scout, came by because Matt is home. Matt's friend Andrew, his fiancée and baby from another woman and 6'8" friend came by and spent an hour with us. Matt is certainly being exposed to different examples, and I think he sees the danger of some of these examples. I just wish I would have known what to do to set the right example for those I love, including Michael Grant Calhoon."