My husband and I were faced with the horrific task of telling my stepdaughters that their mother, baby sister, and brother-to-be had all been killed in a terrible car accident. As we sat them down that morning, the look of concern on their faces was obvious. They knew something was terribly wrong, just by their father’s demeanor. He was a tough-guy police officer who rarely cried. Yet now he was racked with visible grief. It was hard for him to find the right words. How does a father gently break his daughters’ hearts? With his arms around them, he shared the awful news. The day was filled with shock and despair. Everyone was shifting back and forth from bouts of sobs to heavy confusion, marked by a blank stare. I began dutifully making phone calls. With seven children attending five different schools, I needed to notify a lot of teachers about upcoming absences from school as we attended the funeral. We made last minute arrangements for our home and dog, then traveled five hours to gather with extended family.
Saying a Final Goodbye
We were surprised to learn there would be a viewing after such a dreadful crash. But Sunni and Cassidy were able to look upon their mother’s veiled face and say goodbye to her and their little sister, who looked like a precious sleeping child whose eyes would flutter and open at any moment. Both girls got a “best friends” necklace, and Sunni’s matching charm went around her mother’s neck, while Cassidy’s was clasped on her sister. When the casket was closed, the girls gathered flowers that they wanted to take home for drying. It had been a lovely, tearful service, and the return trip seemed endless.
“I Saw a Hobo!”
Just prior to reaching our home, my husband decided to make a stop at our rental property, where renovations were being done. He wanted to make a quick assessment of how things were going. Our kids went running around the yard, and Cassidy wandered away from our property to the train tracks. Suddenly, a homeless man sat up in the grass, startling her. It wasn’t uncommon for vagrants to set up camp near those tracks, and on a few occasions we had called the local police to clear them out. “I saw a hobo!” Cassidy exclaimed in terror, and even after my husband had shooed him away, Cassidy talked about the hobo the rest of the drive home.
An Obsessive Distraction
In the next few days we tried to reclaim some normalcy in our lives. The children went back to school, struggling to complete their missed assignments. One afternoon my oldest son and his girlfriend took Cassidy swimming to help cheer her up. When they returned, he confided, “Mom, Cassidy talked about the hobo the entire time she was with us. It was weird.”
The next day we received a phone call from the principal at Cassidy’s school. He wanted me and my husband to meet with him and a group of other administrators that very afternoon. Apparently there had been “a disturbance” at the school, and he needed to discuss what happened with us. We tried collecting ourselves, and hurried over. Now, I’ve had meetings at schools before, especially with having an autistic son. Yet this was the biggest meeting regarding one of my kids that I’ve ever attended at a school. The principal, five teachers, the school nurse, the school psychologist, and several other administrators were there, seated in a semi-circle. It was more than a bit intimidating. “Today at the end of lunch we heard screaming in the hallways,” a teacher explained. “Kids were running in all different directions, hysterical. They were screaming that Cassidy had been kidnapped by a hobo with a knife. We couldn’t imagine what was going on,” she said.
“We almost had a lockdown,” said the principal. “We couldn’t find Cassidy, and then suddenly she was seen hiding in some trees at the perimeter of the school yard. She had told a bunch of students something about a hobo who lives in her back yard, who carries a knife, and that he had come to the school to take her. What do you know about this?”
Suddenly I felt very, very sad for my stepdaughter. “Cassidy was just diagnosed with bipolar disorder,” I explained. “And I believe most of you know that ten days ago her mother and sister were killed in a terrible accident.” We explained that she had seen a homeless man near our rental property, but that was many miles from our actual home. We talked about Cassidy’s obsession with the hobo, and I promised to call her psychiatrist right away to ask for advice. The school psychologist then spoke to Cassidy and gave suggestions for her to seek help from the school staff when she felt panicked. “Talk to your teacher, not the other students,” he said, “because it frightens them too much.”
Choosing Fear Over Grief
Later, on the phone with her psychiatrist, I retold the story. “It’s likely Cassidy is fixating on the hobo to avoid grief,” the psychiatrist said. “If she can focus on something big, scary, and distracting, she doesn’t have to think about the painful loss of her mother and sister.” The doctor also recommended that Cassidy immediately stop taking her Adderall. “It can cause hallucinations when a child is under extreme stress,” she said. We made a follow-up appointment for the next Monday. “And bring Sunni,” the psychiatrist said. “I’d like to see how she’s doing, too.”
Kristyn Crow is the author of this blog. Visit her website by clicking here.
To read the first part of this story, click here.
To read about the symptoms of childhood bipolar disorder, click here.
For ways to help your child with bipolar disorder succeed in school, click here. Some links on this blog may have been generated by outside sources are not necessarily endorsed by Kristyn Crow.