Art exhibit was a fitting tribute to Cassie Chee
There’s no more heart-wrenching situation for a parent to have to cope with
than the death of a child, and when that death is due to a suicide, it’s
extremely crushing and unthinkable to cope with.
But the Chee family of North Attleboro has turned their grief into a foundation
named after their daughter, who took her own life on Jan. 21, 2020. Cassie’s
Cause (www.cassiescause.com), is a non-profit foundation that was created to
raise awareness about mental health, the need to increase access to treatment
and make it easier to get treated for mental illness --- and the increase in suicide among teens and young
adults.
The foundation was started last June, and recently, the Attleboro Arts Museum
in downtown Attleboro, MA, held an art exhibit to honor Cassie Chee. I wrote
this column about the program held Feb. 26 to mark the end of the month-long
exhibition of Cassie’s artwork at the museum.
To read more about Cassie’s Cause, read the story posted right before this
column, which I wrote last summer about the foundation.
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This column was published Wednesday, March 2, 2022, in The Sun Chronicle of
Attleboro, MA. Read the column on the newspaper’s website at: https://www.thesunchronicle.com/opinion/columns/larry-kessler-the-best-way-to-honor-cassie-chee/article_b43a1ed8-232a-5270-955f-574dd33e24a1.html
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The Attleboro Arts Museum’s recent exhibit, “Remembering
Artist Cassie Chee (2002-2020),” lived up to its title in a big way.
It was clear from the more than 100 people who turned out Saturday afternoon to
honor her that Cassie will never be forgotten, and that’s as it should be.
Cassie, for those who didn’t know her or who haven’t been to the Cassie’s Cause
website (www.cassiescause.com), committed suicide on
Jan. 21, 2020 at the age of 17. Her family started the foundation in her memory
last June to ensure that an abundance of good can come out of the tragic end to
her life.
The
family’s anguish, grief and pain are honestly portrayed on the website in
essays written by Cassie’s mother Roseanne. Last summer, in The Sun Chronicle,
I told the family’s story, as well as its aspirations for the-then fledgling
Cassie’s Cause, a non-profit
501(c)(3) foundation.
According to its mission statement, the foundation is “dedicated to increasing
the education and awareness around mental health, as well as eradicating the
stigmas associated with mental illness, and is also dedicated to the prevention
of suicide in young adults.”
Abby Rovaldi --- the curator of the Cassie’s Cause exhibit, the museum’s
programs coordinator and a longtime museum teacher --- taught Cassie when she
first took classes there at age 6 in 2007, she recalled.
She told the audience at the program, which capped off the month-long exhibit
of Cassie’s artwork, that she approached the family last summer about showing
her work, and they immediately embraced the idea.
Rovaldi said the just-concluded art show was Cassie’s second as her creations
were featured in a 2011 show when she was given an award as an up-and-coming
artist.
She was close to tears while talking about Cassie the artist and the person, just
as her predecessors at the podium had been.
Cassie’s older sister Lindsay spoke eloquently, comparing her younger sibling to
a star that burned out too soon, but noted that she’s still very much a part of
the universe. Lindsay also said changes in how mental health issues are viewed
and treated must include expanded coverage by insurance companies, many of
which either refuse to cover such problems or don’t meet the actual cost of
treatment.
Her pastor at the Evangelical Covenant Church in Attleboro, the Rev. Doug
Bixby, told about the grief that Cassie’s friends and fellow North Attleboro
High School students felt after her death in her senior year.
He talked about how anxious they were to tell their stories about Cassie, and related
how many of them got tattoos in her memory.
One of Cassie’s teachers at NAHS, Kathy Cavedon, spoke about how helpful and
caring Cassie was, both to her and to others. For example, she said, Cassie
would often take students feeling as if they didn’t belong into a group with
her friends so they’d feel better.
The most moving words came from Roseanne, who acknowledged --- as she does on
the foundation’s website --- that in the days and weeks after Cassie’s death,
she at one point had thought about taking her own life.
“I am not going to lie. I did entertain the thought of joining Cassie … that
was always somewhere on my mind. I could not function … I could barely breathe …
and the only thing I can say that kept me in this life was my older daughter,
Lindsay,” she wrote on the website.
“She had just lost her baby sister. How could I ever add to that pain? It did
not take long for me to realize that in no way ending my life was a
possibility. So now what?”
Roseanne said what helped her was her conviction, as she put it on the website,
that “I knew in my soul, and deep within my heart, that Cassie’s story did not
end with her physical death.”
She said she’s convinced that many ideas she’s had about the foundation,
including the name, have come to her from Cassie.
The Chees, Roseanne emphasized, want to
continue to raise awareness about mental health and the issues surrounding it
that are still keeping many people from getting treated properly.
The strong turnout at the museum’s exhibit finale, held near the end of the
second year of a pandemic that has kept far too many of us isolated, offers hope
that real progress on mental health, the stigma that’s associated with it and
suicide prevention will be made.
Such an outcome would be the best way to honor Cassie’s life.
FOR HELP: For those needing help, the National Suicide Hotline number is 1-800-273-8255.
Larry Kessler is a retired Sun Chronicle local news editor and can be reached
at larrythek65@gmail.com. He blogs at larrytheklineup.blogspot.com
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