Too Soon To End

Nicole John. Daughter. Sister. Niece. Friend. Classmate. Schoolmate. According to an aunt, she is artistic. On her blog, Nicole describes herself as having a wild streak. We all wear identity tags, some of them lightly. One was weightier than most. "Daughter of US Envoy" is how the New York Times described her because her father is the  Ambassador to Thailand. Yahoo News wrote she attended "the International School in Bangkok" as if ISB is the school and the only one of its kind in Bangkok. We both came to New York City from Bangkok along different trajectories. But we are not so different from the thousands of other newcomers to the City, filled with hope or imagining a faraway future around a twisty bend. What we seek to find we cannot tell; and not knowing, we can lose our way.

Nicole John fell to her death from the 25th floor of a midtown apartment building at four a.m. on Friday. She had been to a party there. Police think she crawled out onto a ledge to take a photograph of the Empire State Building nearby. Her host has been arrested for serving alcohol to underage minors. She was just seventeen. In the Times photograph, he is a pudgy man, smiling for the camera with hands cuffed behind him. The trendy nightclub where Nicole had also been partying earlier that night is under investigation.  She had used a fake ID to get in. On it, her given age is twenty-three. These facts are part of the news reports.

Nicole would have been a freshman at Parsons New School of Design. The class of 2014 will begin their first classes Monday without her. All the old clichés surface: too young to die, a waste, promise unfulfilled, she had her whole life ahead of her.  "Clubbed to Death" and "Plummet Gal" chortled one tabloid uneasily, tasteless footnotes for another young girl dead before her time. Because she fit the Paris Hilton trope: young, privileged, wealthy, beautiful, idle--and careless--she has earned the front page of the tabloids and significant column inches in the Times NY/Region pages. Nicole is this weekend's news.

Her family will remember this weekend for the rest of their lives. It is they who must also live with the sorrow and the regret, as well as the terrible question, how could we have kept her safe? Unfortunately, children make choices without heeding their parents. As parents, we know this truth. We know children do not think of us before they act. Nothing done can be undone. If only they knew that.