By Erika Hayasaki
Why does a school direction on loss of life have a three-year ready record?
When nurse Norma Bowe determined to educate a direction on loss of life at a school in New Jersey, she by no means anticipated it to be renowned. yet 12 months after yr scholars crowd into her school room, and the reason being transparent: Norma’s “death category” is actually approximately how one can utilize what poet Mary Oliver famously referred to as our “one wild and invaluable life.”
Under the guise of discussions approximately final wills and final breaths and visits to cemeteries and crematoriums, Norma teaches her scholars to discover grace in a single one other. via following her over 4 years, award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki indicates how Norma steers 4 remarkable scholars from their tormented households and neighborhoods towards happiness: she rescues one younger girl from her suicidal mom, is helping a tender guy deal with his schizophrenic brother, and conjures up one other to go away his gang lifestyles at the back of. via this unorthodox category on loss of life, Norma is helping young children who're slightly putting directly to comprehend not just the worth in their personal lives, but additionally the key of achievement: to throw your self into aiding others. Hayasaki’s specialist reporting and literary prose carry Norma’s knowledge out of the school room, reworking it into an inspiring lesson for all. after all, Norma’s personal life—and how she lives it—is the lecture that sticks.
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Additional resources for The Death Class: A True Story About Life
Sample text
The moment I stepped into her office, Norma made it clear that she was no stranger to her own death dramas. She often found herself cast in the center of them. She launched into a recap of the winter break, speaking almost without pause: “A student of mine called me on New Year’s Day, hysterically crying. . Her father, because of the financial crisis, had decided to blow up the house with his wife and son in it. ” When the girl arrived home, the house was filled with gas. Norma knew the man needed a psychiatric evaluation.
Without them he could hardly see his hand in front of him. Frigid water poured into the plane, rapidly rising to his waist. No, he thought, it would not be the crash that killed him; he was going to drown. He stripped down to his underwear, bolting over the top of the seats like a lizard. He slithered so fast that soon there was no water, just the fabric tops of seats. He missed the first emergency exit, which he might have been able to spot had he been wearing his glasses, but found his way to an exit at the front of the plane and onto a slide that led to a floating dinghy.
Death anxiety, Becker believes, is the powerful undercurrent stirring human behavior. ” he wrote. “The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax, which is why one type of cultural man rebels openly against the idea of God. ” But if death is terrifying to most people, Norma knew that her job was to impart the more useful lesson about it: how to live a good life while always under the sharp tip of mortality.