Dear April: please be better than March. I thank you in advance.

I teach adults how to cook (or how to cook better, in some cases), simple as that.  I usually have anywhere from 13-22 students in a class, and, with a few exceptions, we spend 6-7 hours a day together, 5 days a week.
Needless to say, we get to know one another pretty well.
My class this semester started with 15 students- all bright (some brighter than others), all hard workers, all pretty tight with one another as a group.  I dare say that they are one of the best classes I've had, and most days they are fun to teach, fun to challenge, and just fun to be around.

Well...in the last month, two of those fifteen students have died very suddenly, and very tragically considering they were both in their early 20's.

When the first student died, I got the news from one of his classmates via voice mail- I didn't believe what I had heard at first, so I had to call them back to confirm.  The student that died was just such a "good" and "normal" guy that the reality of his death just didn't register with me.  It was a snowmobile accident (those things happen in this part of the world)- he had been out to a bar with some friends, and he and his friends were riding across a lake to his house to hang out.  He had given his helmet to his female passenger, they hit a tree- she lived, he died.
The grief among my students that day and at the funeral was crushing.  I had a hard time holding back tears myself, and employed the trick of "think of something so ridiculous that you can't possibly cry" each time I felt the urge.  I thought of this.  Yes, I know- ridiculous.  But it worked.
The whole situation was surreal- I'd never had anything like this happen, and I couldn't even recall hearing of ANY students dying while attending my school.

Little did I know, it would happen again this week.

He was a troubled student that I really liked a lot.  He was obviously involved with drugs (my guess is meth, primarily), and we had numerous discussions about this fact.  Truth be told, he was one tiny hair away from getting suspended, but because I liked him and saw potential, I let it go on longer than maybe I normally would have.
When the Dean of my department called a few of us down to her office Thursday and told us what had happened, that he had died, you could have pushed me over with a feather.  The shock was there, the disbelief that this couldn't be happening AGAIN to the same class was there, and the soul-crushing, suffocating sadness was there all over again.  Again.

Considering the amount of tragedy this class has endured (in addition to their two classmates, they have also  had 1 brother, two best friends, one parent and three grandparents die this semester as well), they handled it pretty well.  Some were angry at themselves as well as the deceased, assuming that drugs were involved and why didn't they do more about it.  Most were just...shocked.  Shocked that we were sitting yet again in a classroom, mourning a fellow student and crying instead of tackling the usual business of cooking. 

I found out yesterday that it was suicide.  So sad, so pointless.

So, on Monday, I will yet again put on a tasteful but grim outfit, drive out to the suburbs to a church I will likely never set foot in again, and feel sad about someone so young dying so senselessly.

And I'll worry.  I'll now worry that this could happen again, even though the odds are against it. 
Grief and worry, grief and worry. 

That's all.
That's just what has been weighing on my mind lately.