From Syllabus to Sympathy

Column by Joe Pisani

A class I teach in public speaking causes my college students a lot of anxiety — and sometimes outright fear. According to some surveys, public speaking ranks right up there with dying as far as things that terrify us.

I’ve seen students break down and cry when they had to address their classmates. That’s how much stress it causes. Nevertheless, they’re not afraid to talk about death. Let me explain.

The first speaking assignment of the semester — sort of an icebreaker to introduce them to the practice — is a simple two-minute speech on the topic, “If you could take anyone to dinner, living or dead, who would it be and why?”

A number of them respond the way I’d expect young people to, by selecting the notoriously popular celebrities and sports figures the internet is chronically abuzz over, starting with Taylor Swift, the Kardashian clan, globally popular soccer players Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, and the other usual suspects young people adulate, such as Sabrina Carpenter, Zendaya, Olivia Rodrigo and Bad Bunny. (OK, I confess I had to Google some of them to find out who they were.)

 However, most students choose someone closer to home for their dinner date, such as an estranged father, a sister or a brother. But if they could, many would take someone to dinner who has died — a mother, a father, a sibling, grandparents, or a close friend lost to an overdose or violence.

I’m always amazed and saddened to see how much grief students carry around with them. Frequently, it’s grief that has just been stuffed away and hidden and never adequately dealt with. Then, every so often, they take it out and cry, and this speech seems to give them that opportunity.

It’s usually grief they acquired at a young age, when they had no understanding of what it was to lose a loved one or how to deal with it. And it was usually the first time they intimately encountered death.

Sad to say, their grief is sometimes accompanied by guilt, which has been unresolved and often unwarranted. For example, one summer evening, a young woman’s brother asked her to hang out with him, but she refused despite his pleas, so he went out with his friends and was killed in a drunken driving car accident. Her guilt made her grief unbearable.

Another lost a cousin in a random shooting, and yet another lost a brother to a drug overdose.

They often talk about their beloved grandmothers and grandfathers who raised them, nurtured them and guided them through life. One young woman spoke lovingly about her grandfather, who did everything for her and would take her out in his red pickup truck. She was devastated when he died, and after a few months passed, a red pickup truck drove past her house, and she was ecstatic because in that confused instant she thought he was coming to visit … until she remembered he was gone.

Another girl talked about her grandmother who loved her dearly, but when she died in their native country, no one told her. When she found out, she was inconsolable. However, she later had a dream in which her grandmother came to console her and told her that she had much to be happy about because she would graduate from college and grow up to be a beautiful woman and they would meet again someday.

After years of listening to these simple moving speeches, I realized the importance grandparents had in their lives. I also realized the young people had no mechanism for grieving and that their speeches were a way for them to express a deep pain in their hearts.

Unfortunately, they were often told by adults that they should have gotten over it and moved on. Some were told their loved ones are in a better place — which is true but not always helpful when you’re confronting a monumental loss. Or that time heals all wounds. But what is time to a teenager?

I also realized the Holy Spirit is always at work, comforting them as they share stories with their classmates. Some cry as they recall their loss. Others offer condolences and compassion, thoughts and prayers.

Who would have thought a public speaking class could be an occasion for one young person to console another, who is enduring the most fundamental suffering in life, the loss of a loved one.