TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

School Is Rock For Teen Torn By Loss

ADVERTISEMENT

By MARILYN BROWN

mbrown@tampatrib.com

Published: March 29, 2009

BRANDON - Megan Biretz, 17, never had an easy life.

Her single mom struggled to support her while battling cervical cancer, then complications. Family demons - alcoholism, drugs and mental illness - hovered over the household with three adults and one child. Then, in two short days in early March, even that precarious family life vanished.

One day, Megan's mother was lying unconscious in the hospital.

The next afternoon, their home burned.

Later that night, Megan's mom died.

Janie Biretz-Rola had turned 39 a week earlier. "She barely made it," Megan says.

It's Megan's senior year at Brandon High School, where she is co-president of student government. In nine weeks, the heady days of transitioning from high school to college should begin.

Instead, Megan is coping with a home in foreclosure and a life out of balance.

"It messes with my head," she says. "I still don't know if it's hit me."

Megan was born in Waterloo, Iowa. She moved with her mother and her mom's partner to Florida when she was in second grade. Her mother was soon hired by Pharmacy Management Services Inc.

Before that life-changing transition, Megan's parents had divorced, and her mother's second marriage had ended before she was 4. Her father and stepfather relinquished legal rights and paid no support.

Biretz-Rola was the one who took responsibility for others - at home and at her job at Pharmacy Management, coordinating care for patients with catastrophic injuries.

Their Florida household included her mom's partner and Megan's uncle, who were both on disability. Megan's grandmother also lived with them until about two years ago, when she died of emphysema.

Her mom worked overtime to make sure Megan had the basics and extras such as a cell phone, computer, concert tickets and yearbooks.

Even when her health was failing - barely able to move with a cane - Biretz-Rola was at Brandon High in October helping Megan make centerpieces for the student government's annual homecoming production.

Self-Discovery

Starting in ninth grade, Megan immersed herself in the school's small student government. The student body elected her the first-ever junior co-president and re-elected her as a senior. Her mother took great pride in Megan's leadership role, good grades and independent nature.

"She lived her life apart from Megan, but also with Megan," says Cindy Ramsey, Biretz-Rola's co-worker and best friend for a decade. "Janie allowed Megan to express herself and was comfortable with that."

Before her mom became too ill, she drove Megan to a concert featuring Megan's favorite horror punk band, Wednesday 13, then waited outside until the concert was over so Megan could introduce her to the band. They got tattoos together to celebrate when Biretz-Rola seemed to be beating cancer.

It was untraditional, but, "Janie knew Megan better than most parents know their child," Ramsey says.

The fashion co-consulting didn't stop at tattoos.

Megan often dyes her bangs and the back of her long hair.

"It's kind of my trademark," she says. It was pink last fall. Now it's blue. When her mom was still able, she helped dye the back.

When Megan took cosmetology classes at Brandon High, her mother sacrificed her long hair for Megan's first haircut.

"It ended up with a bob," Megan says. "It was horrible. ... It's blatantly uneven. When my mom looks in the mirror in the bathroom, she says, 'Oh, it's fine.'"

Those who knew them both say Megan is a lot like her mom: smart, focused, a good organizer, unassuming, worried more about others than herself.

Flood Of Misfortune

In June, a natural disaster added to the family's misfortune.

Megan was visiting her great aunt Connie Rinnels and cousins in Iowa, as she had many other summers.

She had been there a few days when heavy rain flooded Waterloo, and the family was evacuated in the night.

During the week the family spent in a motel before she returned home, Megan salvaged family pictures, dried them out and put them back into albums.

"None of us had ever seen anything like it before," Rinnels says.

The 8-month-old house was destroyed, and the Rinnels family now lives in a mobile home nearby.

In November, a new round of health issues surfaced. Biretz-Rola had an appendectomy, then complications.

"The hardest part for Megan is Janie was always one to communicate with her," Ramsey says. "She probably didn't tell her how bad this was because she didn't want to disappoint her. She quit talking to her. That was hard."

When Megan awakened March 2, she learned that an ambulance had taken her mother to Brandon Regional Hospital. When Megan got there, her mother was on a ventilator, pale and unresponsive. Ramsey says it was a heart attack.

The next day, Megan went to school and was called to the office. Two of her friends were there. She thought her mother had died.

"I had to tell her that her house burned down," said Stephanie Davis, Brandon High's assistant principal.

Megan didn't know what to say or do. "By this point, I'm used to bad stuff happening to me," she says.

Firefighters determined a candle had been left unattended in Megan's mom's bedroom, Ramsey says.

That same day, Rinnels arrived "to make sure Megan was OK." She found out as she got on the plane in Iowa that the house had burned.

Ramsey, Rinnels and Megan went to the house. "It smelled horrible, really disgusting," Megan says.

Mom Watches Over

The door to Megan's room had been closed, so there was mainly smoke and water damage. She thinks those who said her mom was watching over her, protecting what she had left, were right.

When the three left the house and went back to the hospital, nothing had changed. The tubes and machines kept Megan's mother breathing.

Megan didn't know how to let go.

"It was very difficult for her to have to say goodbye," Ramsey says. Megan had a ticket to see Wednesday 13 play in Orlando that night, courtesy of her mom. Ramsey and Rinnels encouraged her to go, saying her mother would want her to.

Megan left for the show with friends.

When the concert was over, she started to text message her mother, as usual, to tell her all about it.

Then she realized sharing memorable moments in her life with her mother was ending.

Megan's mother died about 9:30 that night.

The next day, Megan insisted on going to school.

"I've lived at school the past four years," she says. It has been her escape and her salvation.

Megan didn't go to classes that day. She stayed with Davis, who has legal custody of Megan and has taken her into her home in Seffner.

Megan and Rinnels stayed at a motel and Davis' home the week Biretz-Rola died. Megan helped plan the memorial service. Donations from her friends and her mom's co-workers, and from two businessmen and sales representatives who worked with her mother, paid for the funeral.

The service touched Megan. People she had never met knew all about her and her accomplishments because her mom had told them all.

"It was amazing," Megan says. "I was so thankful. It made me feel good to know people I had never met knew me and cared about me."

Moving Forward

Megan is impressed with $400 in donations made to a local bank account set up for her by Ramsey and Rinnels. She doesn't realize it won't go far with graduation and college coming up.

"That's it - that's all the baby has," Ramsey says.

Megan's mom had medical insurance, unused vacation pay and disability pay through her work, but that money couldn't keep up with all the bills.

Payments on the mortgage were eight months behind. Now it's burned out, and it's not clear who owns it. Rinnels is trying to sort that out.

Megan's mom's partner left the state to live with relatives, and her uncle is with friends.

Rinnels, who works for a telephone company in Iowa, says Megan knows she is welcome there.

Davis says Megan can stay at her home as long as she wants. She and school counselors are looking for scholarships.

Megan says she plans to go to college. Her mother wanted her to.

For now, she is focused on graduation. She got her report card Wednesday: A's and one B.

"I really don't know what to think yet," she says. "I feel I had to grow up overnight."

Last Sunday afternoon, Davis drove Megan to a crafts store in Brandon to meet Ramsey.

Megan's mother had been cremated. The ashes had been divided to give to her partner, her brother and Megan.

Ramsey gave Megan a small, shiny black urn in a little black drawstring bag.

Megan brought the urn back to her room at Davis' house and put it on a lower shelf. Her mother's picture is on the top shelf.

The urn is secure in the little black bag, ready to be taken wherever Megan goes.

Reporter Marilyn Brown can be reached at (813) 259-8069.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT