It is difficult enough for teenagers to cope with death.

But the teens at one high school in New York have faced death eight times in the past few months — and found solace and support in religion:

In the face of eight deaths of their fellow students in the past year, many teens at Fairport High School in a small town outside Rochester have turned to their faith for comfort and strength.

“Right after it happened I had a lot of questions. But I think my faith strengthened,” said Colleen Feeney, a parishioner at the Church of the Assumption in Fairport who was on the school’s varsity cheerleading squad with four of the five 2007 Fairport High graduates who died in a June 26 car crash.

Earlier in the year a student died of cancer; last summer a student drowned.

The school community received another blow when 2007 Fairport graduate David Anderson, a student at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, was found dead in his dormitory room late Sept. 6. As of Sept. 10, no details had been released about the cause of Andersen’s death.

“We know this tragedy will once again shake all of us in Fairport and in particular of course David’s family and his friends and former classmates,” wrote Fairport High principal Dave Paddock in a Sept. 7 e-mail to students and parents. “The love that got us through this summer must once again get us and our young people through yet another tragic loss,” he added.

Hundreds of teens – both Catholic and non-Catholic – flocked to the daily Mass at Assumption June 27, the morning after the crash. Hundreds more attended a special service that night at St. John of Rochester in Fairport and a candlelight vigil at the school.

“Everybody bonding together and helping out, it makes everything so much lighter,” Feeney told the Catholic Courier, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Rochester.

Still, she acknowledged that losing her friends has been the heaviest load she and her peers have ever carried. “We’ve had to grow up really fast,” she said.

The five teens had been in a sport utility vehicle which passed a van on a two-lane highway and then swerved back into oncoming traffic and hit a tractor-trailer, causing both vehicles to burst into flames. The truck driver was uninjured but the teen driver and passengers all died on the scene in an accident witnessed by friends in another car.

Fairport High School student Larry Hall was home watching television when he received a frantic phone call from his sister, Riley, watching the crash in horror.

“My sister called me right as it happened : ‘I need to talk to Mom, where’s Mom, my friends are dying,'” he recalled her saying.

For another student, Lauren Flynn, the scene rekindled memories of her friend Natalie Giambattista, who had died three months earlier of ovarian cancer.

At the time of Giambattista’s death, Flynn had been consoled all day at the high school by youth-group friends and even people she didn’t know. So on the day after the accident she wasn’t surprised to see teens and adults congregate in a show of unity that transcended cliques and age differences.

“Fairport is big, but it’s small at the same time,” she said.

When student Robby McGee went to the perpetual adoration chapel at St. John of Rochester, he was concerned that his crying would disturb people in silent prayer. Instead he got a hand on his shoulder and words of comfort from Father Peter Clifford, the pastor.

There’s a message of hope here, and assurance. Read the rest and you’ll feel heartened. No one has all the answers when it comes to coping with loss. But these kids at least know where to turn with their questions.