Free The Death Class: A True Story About Life by Erika Hayasaki Page B

whispers. He went home and called her to say good-bye again. She hung up and dialed 911 and sent an ambulance to his house. Sure enough, by the time paramedics arrived he had overdosed onasthma medication; he ended up in the intensive care unit for three days on dialysis. He survived that suicide attempt but hung himself not too long after. “For some people,” she said, “it’s just too much to bear to live like that.”
    In Norma’s profession, you didn’t always win—but when you did, it affirmed life. Caitlin wanted that for herself too.
    Ever since high school, Caitlin had been thinking about becoming a school psychologist, since one day in ninth grade, when her sister had called Caitlin on her cell phone while she was in class. Looking at her caller ID, Caitlin knew her sister had stayed home from school that day. Worrying that something awful had happened to their parents, she slipped out of class and into the bathroom to take the call.
    “What’s going on?”
    “Mommy’s high and they’re fighting,” her sister said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
    Caitlin hung up and wandered into the empty hall, debating whether she should tell a school nurse she felt sick so she could go home. She had never told a soul about what was going on at home. A friend turned the corner, saw her crying, and took her to a counselor’s office. With her friend’s support, she felt safe with the counselor, who helped her talk about her family problems for the first time. Talking made her feel better. Caitlin knew she wanted to help people, as her school counselor had helped her that day and as Norma helped her students and patients.
    “I want to change lives, like on a big scale, like huge,” Caitlin said once. “I plan on living an extraordinary life.”
    Of the death class excursions, the autopsy observation was by far the most popular field trip, right behind the visit to the maximum-security prison, and most students could hardly wait to see a dead body being dissected. Caitlin, who had seen her mother’s abused and withering body up close, wanted no part of it. She told her professor and her parents that she was not going. Norma pushed her anyway, told her to get past her fears. There’s no way in hell, Caitlin thought. The germs alone would make her want to run away and drench herself in sanitizers and antiseptics.
    On the morning of the trip, Caitlin told her father, “I’m not going.”
    But he looked at her and replied, “You’re going.” For all of their problems, her parents knew this professor of hers was a good influence. Her dad’s words echoed: Don’t be a quitter.
    When Caitlin showed up at the medical examiner’s office, she saw a dead person on the table who had died of alcohol and drug abuse. She stared at the swollen organs, the liver, the lungs. She thought of her mother. This is what her body will look like if she doesn’t stop. But she did not throw up.
    See? Norma said. Caitlin could face her worst fears without chants or pennies or sanitizers and still come out okay.
    “It’s good to be alive, right?” the professor often told her students after the autopsy, including those who had run outside in tears. “Did you notice how fragile we are? We have no business taking our lives for granted.”
    A S THE SEMESTER stretched on, Norma suggested it was time for Caitlin to visit a campus therapist. As Caitlin had been learning in school, most mental disorders came from a combination of biology and environment, and the professor thought the sessions could help now that Caitlin was beginning to understand the roots of her anxiety and OCD.
    Maybe Norma was right, Caitlin thought. Maybe she could conquer her demons, invest in herself, even if her parents didn’t seem as though they ever would do the same. She could help others with her background in psychology and get a job working with young people who struggled like her. Maybe she could even get married one day and raise kids in a