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Two Grieving Moms Fight to Protect Students Abroad

Sep 24, 2019 | Parent

Two grieving mothers seek efforts to bring transparency, safety to college abroad programs

Ros Thackurdeen remembers the hype as she sat through a college study abroad session with her youngest son Ravi at Swarthmore University.

“It was pretty exciting,” Thackurdeen said. “I wanted to go on it. You had students who talked about their experiences … You didn’t hear anything bad about it.”

But there was no happy ending for Ravi, who ended up on a study abroad trip to Costa Rica to study global health and tropical medicine. In April 2012, program leaders took Ravi’s group on a surprise trip to Playa Tortuga which, Thackurdeen has since learned, is considered one of the country’s most dangerous beaches. A local fisherman found Ravi’s body two days later.

“I thought it was study abroad’s first death,” Thackurdeen said. But, not long after, she searched study abroad student death on Google and was surprised by what she found — 85 pages of links and stories about the deaths of other college students like Ravi. She started printing out the stories, filling up binders with information and reaching out to officials with questions about safety measures.

“I wanted them to see the faces because I was seeing faces and that was hitting me really hard,” she said. “That is somebody’s child just like my child, and they too are going through the same pain that I’m going through.”

Through her research, Thackurdeen eventually met Elizabeth Brenner, whose youngest son Thomas died while studying abroad in India in September 2011. Together, the two founded Protect Students Abroad, a nonprofit that is working on efforts to prevent fatalities on study abroad programs and provide transparency so parents and students can make smart decisions.

“I can’t abandon this,” Brenner said. “I wouldn’t know how to abandon this. It’s really, really hard. But there is, at this point, because of everything that’s happened and because of the person that I am now, no other choice.”

No mandatory reporting

Study abroad programs are growing. The Institute of International Education’s 2018 Open Doors report found that the total number of U.S. students studying overseas grew by 2.3% in 2016–17 when compared to the year before. About 10% of the country’s undergraduate students study abroad.

But, said Brenner and Thackurdeen, parents and students often know little about the programs.

“If the third party program appears on the university’s website and if they appear in a study abroad forum, most parents and students assume that the home university has eyes on the program,” Brenner said. ”Nothing can be further from the truth. And on the backend of it, if it goes wrong, every single parent we have met with talk about how far the programs will scurry away [saying] ‘This isn’t our program. We have nothing to do with this.’ There isn’t a requirement. Parents find out on the backend, and the waivers are really, really tight.”

For both Brenner and Thackurdeen, that lack of support and transparency is part of the problem. For many parents who are grieving a child who died overseas, it can be almost impossible to find out the details of their death.

“There’s no mandatory reporting at all,” said Brenner. “So, potentially, you will get the narrative that they would like to have been true. … We know of families who really struggle to figure out what really happened to their child.”

Brenner and Thackurdeen are luckier. For Brenner, a student newspaper reporter took an interest in the case. Together, the two traveled to India and were able to find out what happened. Students who were on the trip with her son also provided some answers. Thackurdeen got answers from a couple who were taking a walk on the beach and witnessed what happened, along with some of the other students who were on the trip.

“You may spend the rest of your life not knowing what happened and not getting the truth from anyone,” Brenner said. “It adds a whole different layer to the experience.”

Pushing for passage

Together, Brenner and Thackurdeen want to prevent other families from suffering similar heartbreaks. The two are working to secure the passage of two federal bills that would provide families with more transparency when a student dies on a study abroad program and help other families make informed decisions about which program to send their child on.

“One of the first things that surprised me was finding out after Thomas died that it was his program’s 12th death,” Brenner said.

Both bills, which have bipartisan support and have been introduced in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, tackle the issue from different angles and, Brenner and Thackurdeen said, are needed.

Named after Thackurdeen’s son, the Ravi Thackurdeen Safe Students Study Abroad Bill amends the Higher Education Act of 1965 to require colleges and universities to report safety incidents, including deaths, accidents and illnesses requiring hospitalization, sexual assaults and events that generate a police report.

The American Students Abroad Act requires that the U.S. Department of State share consular reports of U.S. citizen deaths abroad to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so that the CDC can analyze the data to uncover patterns and find ways to prevent these deaths and injuries.

Despite their own family’s experiences, both Brenner and Thackurdeen still support opportunities to study abroad. Each have two other children who went overseas on study abroad trips.

“We hear back from programs and colleges that this will hamper us, cut into study abroad growth,” Thackurdeen said. “That’s just not going to happen. One of our student interns is going on her study abroad. She’s very much aware from working with us of some of the dangers, and she’s using that information to ask questions and educate herself about it.”

For parents and students who are contemplating a study abroad program, Brenner and Thackurdeen have some advice.

#1 Educate yourself

Check out Protect Students Abroad’s website to learn more about the safety issues for students traveling abroad. “It’s really learning, firsthand, from what we’ve gone through and taking that information and asking better questions and doing some of the research,” Thackurdeen said.

#2 Make sure your child’s prepared

Encourage your child to read local newspapers from the area where they are traveling and remind them about the importance of being aware of their surroundings at all times.

#3 Ask the hard questions

Seek out statistics about injuries or deaths. Ask about safety measures. Make sure you truly understand the relationship between your child’s home university, the study abroad program and the host country.

“They may not be in alignment or communicating with each other even though it looks like they are from the website or from the study abroad forum your child went to or the literature that has come home with your child,” Brenner said.

#4 Read the waiver

Said Thackurdeen: “Look very hard at the waiver before they sign it. If you are uncomfortable with the language of it, speak to a personal attorney. It’s not about money. It’s about having your day in court.”

“And getting the truth,” added Brenner. “How many of us are fighting to just get the facts about what happened to our child.”

Brenner and Thackurdeen encourage others to ask their U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative to support the two bills in Congress, S. 1572 and S. 1575 in the Senate, and H.R. 2875 and H.R. 2876 in the House.

Choosing to Try: One Mother’s Journey After Her 24-Year-Old Daughter’s Death

Apr 10, 2019 | Parent

Cynthia with Sarah-Grace.

Grief teaches a mother lessons she never wanted to learn

My husband Brad came home to tell me what he had learned minutes earlier. Sarah is gone… Our Sarah-Grace. Our beautiful 24-year-old daughter. Dead.

With three words and within mere seconds, I was shattered, gutted, disoriented.

Any word that implies destruction, pain or confusion is relevant to that moment, but none alone, or combined, capture the devastation and confusion I felt after hearing those words.

Two years later, I’m trying not to evaluate a string of heavy days where my grief is so raw it feels frighteningly new.

I remind myself that grief has nothing to do with functioning well or poorly, and the characteristics of it on any given day don’t mean much.

Instead, I’ve learned that grief is my constant companion with a rhythm and intensity that’s unpredictable and often overwhelming.

Processing death, understanding grief

After Sarah died, I’d catch myself thinking that I’ll be relieved of this suffering because I’m trying so hard and I’m doing my best.

The process of understanding that Sarah is dead, however, has been an agonizing and bizarre evolution.

First, there were the feelings of anticipation. Most days during the first year of grief, I’d tell myself, I can’t survive this. Then, Yes, I can. Just hold on. This will go away. When Sarah comes home.

For a second, relief soothed my broken heart until truth slapped me in the face. No! That’s not true.

These battles with reality went on for months. I don’t know what made them stop, but one day I simply noticed they had ended. ‘I’ve been defeated,’ I thought. ‘Truth and reality have won. I know the truth about Sarah will never change.’

In more grateful moments, I marvel at the way my psyche works to gently integrate this truth into my consciousness.

When the words, Sarah can’t be gone, pop into my head, I recognize that my grief is changing. But it’s slow and subtle, and grief is still wildly and strangely independent of my other emotions, making any day unpredictable.

And these days, I have two kinds of days, OK/fine or bad/terrible. Both are unsettling. On the bad days, I wonder, will I be this way forever? On the OK days, I wonder, does this mean I’m over the trauma of Sarah’s death? I know the answer to both of those questions, but I’m new in this process and I don’t know what the future will bring, so I have to ask.

What I’ve learned about grief

All that I’ve learned as a grieving mother is only vaguely describable and not very teachable.

I remember in the early days being told that my grief will change. After two years, I can say that’s true, but I can’t really explain what’s changed other than, it’s different. Or, how it still feels painful, but in a different way. Or, what occurs to make that happen other than an excruciating breakdown of life and self, followed by the arduous rebuilding of everything. And that’s not very helpful.

Sarah’s death on Nov. 7, 2016 brought devastation, pain and confusion to her family’s life. Her mom shares that “one of the most important truths that keeps me going is Sarah wouldn’t want that to be her legacy. She doesn’t deserve it either.”

So, when I read that people feel their child, or that they carry their child’s heart in their heart, I wonder how that came to be? What am I doing wrong that I don’t have that? Is it even true or possible? What does that even mean?

But I know there’s nothing of what I will come to understand about grieving and surviving the death of my daughter that can be fast-tracked or transferred from one person to another.

I know I’ll find answers because parental grief is the most persistent and demanding teacher I’ve ever encountered. The insights are so painfully acquired.

Charting a path toward survival

I can’t imagine ever breathing easily when I think of or say the words Brad came home to deliver. I don’t even write them with ease.

I’m not innately wired to cope with the death of my child. Instead, I must consciously try not to fight against my grief and be, as is often said, present with it. That’s the second hardest thing about Sarah’s death — the daily decision to accept my grief and keep going. But I made a commitment to do just that on the day Sarah died.

That commitment was made during a desperate phone call to Brad’s brother Blaine as the two of us drove to the mortuary. Blaine and his wife, Cheryl, buried their only child, Kyle, 18 years and 5 months before we would bury Sarah. Brad and I had gone to the mortuary with them. We were broken-hearted for their loss and grateful we weren’t in their shoes.

“How do we do this, Blaine?” I sobbed. “How do we even survive?”

“You really have two choices,” he said. “You can either let it completely destroy you or you can try to keep living.”

Somehow, I got through the worst weeks of my life. Later, when time demanded a routine, I was unprepared for what was required of me to heed Blaine’s counsel. The seeming ease and comfort of giving up, rather than trying, has always been alluring.

So, I remind myself of the promise I made when Sarah died: That through every dark, gut-wrenching, lonely day, I will keep trying. I will slog through hell.

What I learned in the conversation with Blaine still grounds me. Surprisingly, it’s not that he pointed out that we have a choice. Rather, it was the chilling summation of his advice, spoken with heavy, palpable sorrow. After giving us our two options, he added, “and I don’t have to tell you what I chose.”

I cry thinking about the price that was paid, so he could impart that wisdom.

Resolving to do it again

When Sarah died, I expected my grief and faith to be companions, but grief is lonely. At the end of the day, I’m alone with thoughts, questions and fears that make me an inhospitable environment for the whispers of spirituality. Yet, I still hold on to my faith, knowing a power beyond my own helps me through the minutes and hours.

And each day, I resolve to do it again, though it’s never an easy decision.

Doubt and dread can strike without warning. It’s a constant fight through pain and confusion. But, I want to keep trying, for those I love and for those who love me.

And, missing Sarah as I do, I hope and pray that someday, somehow, I too will know what it means to carry her heart in my heart or feel her with me.

Sarah’s death on Nov. 7, 2016 brought devastation, pain and confusion to my life with a power that could have destroyed me, Brad, our two sons and youngest daughter. Today, one of the most important truths that keeps me going is Sarah wouldn’t want that to be her legacy. She doesn’t deserve it either.

So, to honor Sarah and her indelible place within our family, for Brad and our wonderful, grieving children, I do the hardest work I’ll ever do, even when it feels impossible.

I choose to try. To keep living.

  • Evermore is immensely grateful to Sarah’s mom Cynthia for sharing her experience to benefit other bereaved parents and families.
  • The death of a child is considered one of the worst trauma any human can experience with cascading consequences that endure for a lifetime. How society responds can make all the difference. That is the national imperative we will continue to address here. Toward that end, republishing and citing our work is highly encouraged!