Most Precious Treasure  

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Since I'm a father I think the most precious thing I can be entrusted with is the care of my children. They are depending on my to protect them, feed them, give them advice, and most of all to love them. They don't necessarily understand why they expect these things of me any more than I could understand why I know they are expected. It's the job of every parent to protect their child PERIOD.

I was shocked and disgusted when I read about the woman that drowned her baby in a bathtub in a hotel room a few weeks ago. There were two other children left untouched in the room, tucked in bed. This woman, I'm told was suffering from postpartum depression or something similar since they aren't yet sure. I didn't think it got worse than doing that. I had heard of other cases of a mother killing their child, but that is one of the worst ways I could think of. I am pretty sure because that is my great fear, to drown (of course that is in the deep dark water somewhere not a tub). I figured that after reading that I was pretty desensitized to any other horrid, unspeakable acts by the human race upon their children, but I was wrong.

A few days ago a 911 operator received a call from a man who said that a child was stabbed and thrown down some steps. The officers responded and found a boy of 3 who had been stabbed somewhere in the vicinity of 15 times and then thrown down his concrete steps to the floor below. The witness who happened to be a neighbor said that he saw the boy with multiple stab wounds at the bottom of the stairs and all he could hear was the boy calling out "mommy". It turns out that his mother was the person who stabbed him and then tried to fight with the officers, telling them not to help the child. She had a 2 month old baby in her home.

I'm not a person who sheds a tear about many things. I figured that not many things could affect my heart in a way to bring tears anymore. I was wrong. The thought of this little boy who only knows that mom is there to protect and watch over him, was still calling for the monster who was the reason for all of his pain. He is in critical condition in the hospital as I type this, and they don't know if he will recover or not. His mother was obviously arrested and the little baby girl was taken by child protective services.

People have been making excuses for this woman on the news, on the radio, in the newspapers and around our office even. I hear that she had so many mental problems and that she suffered from postpartum psychosis. There were other people coming on a talk show and telling their stories of near misses due to the same illness.

As I listened to the stories one thing kept crawling back into my mind. ALMOST, they almost hurt their children. They saw they had a problem and got help. They saw something was wrong and took a chance for some self reflection. They saw a problem and they did something about it. They didn't just go half cocked and harm their child. They didn't kill their most precious treasure. They realized soon enough that they could and should do something, that it was their responsibility to take care and protect their child.

I don't feel pity for this woman, and I surely don't feel compassion for her. I feel only sorrow for the poor little boy and little girl. People are too quick to blame everything on a mental disparity. They are quick to have an excuse for something going wrong. The mother had some history of drugs, so could that have maybe been a contributing factor? Was the family aware of what was going on? To some degree they were the sister or sister-in-law thought that drugs were playing a role.

I read about parents struggling to save their children every day. We are watching someone we read here in our own little blog world deal with tragic circumstances with their little monkey. These are people that are striving to do all they can to protect those who rely on us for so much, and then I see the evil, disgusting head of this woman rear itself as she tries to snuff out one of the only things that could have given her any hope of being a productive human being. Her simple task was to raise and love her children and she failed. She failed her poor little boy and that now motherless little girl. Maybe she was afraid to ask for help, and maybe she didn't see a problem. Maybe she thought everybody would look down on her if she admitted she couldn't do it.

I look around me nowadays and I see grief, and fear. I see people full of hopelessness and I see people who have given up. Maybe this woman is just a sign of where we are heading. Maybe she is a front runner to what the parents of the future will be like. This could be the precursor to a truly hellish future. I like to think it's not. I like to think that we are just in an emotional funk as a society. I am hopeful that we are going to figure this out, and we are going to teach our children to be loving, compassionate, caring parents. That is the most important lesson we can give our kids. We can teach them that it's ok to ask for help if we are feeling helpless. It's ok to accept a helping hand when we know we are at the end of our rope. It's also ok to admit we failed at something. We learn far more from our failures than our success. It's not about falling down, it's about getting back up. It's about doing right no matter how badly we are tempted to do wrong.

That is the legacy I'm leaving my kids. Never give up, never lose hope, never stop caring. Randy Travis said it pretty good..."It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it's what you leave behind you when you go.

This entry was posted at Thursday, May 06, 2010 and is filed under , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

11 comments

Wonderful post! So glad you are a proud and great father. I wish all parents saw it your way. Sad things happen out there. That is one thing in my job I have never understood...why the little ones suffer so much at the hands of a rotten person. Who could do that?

Kids are super great!

May 6, 2010 at 10:00 PM

Momma Fargo..that's why you are a super cop, popo MF...

You're right kids are great!

May 6, 2010 at 10:06 PM

Scary, sad, tragic... and we hear it more and more often.

May 6, 2010 at 10:20 PM

Ms. Anthropy...sad but true...and once is too much :(

May 6, 2010 at 11:03 PM

amen.

May 7, 2010 at 1:25 AM

It is sad, who knows what drives these parents to the insanity that must cause them to do this to most innocent of all people.
Like you, I would walk barefoot across hot lava if that's what it took to save The Daughter from danger.

May 7, 2010 at 5:15 AM

Yeeeeaaaah, I have mixed feelings on that one. I totally agree that it's really sad for the kid and I really hope he's going to pull through.

But postpartum psychosis really is something. It's really a psychosis..I've spent a couple of weeks working on a unit of psychotic disorders in a mental ward and in a psychosis, your mind is..elsewhere. In Postpartum depression, a woman usually seeks help, but in a psychosis...she can be completely out of it. No touch with reality, they're delirious..

It's still reprehensible, though. I'm still feeling incredibly sorry for the kid, because he'll be traumatized if he survives..

May 7, 2010 at 4:08 PM

Sarah...I don't dispute the existence of the psychosis...I dispute the media and doctors making that determination without evaluating the woman first...We are too ready to let people off the hook for horrendous actions without consequences...

May 7, 2010 at 8:16 PM

They're talking about it on the media and they didn't give her a psychiatric evaluation first?!? Okay, now that is stupid..I agree with you on that one completely!

May 8, 2010 at 6:48 AM

Now they are saying it was depression and drug use...Hmmmm nobody stepped in before the tragedy and yet the family was aware of the situation...I think that is every bit as tragic as the action :(

May 13, 2010 at 11:08 AM

It makes me so sad to see situations like this....

I'm a father of two, and every time I hear a story about a child being kidnapped or a story like the one you just told, I can't help but well up inside.... I get angry too....

I understand the whole psychosis is horrible stuff....

And I don't doubt that she was having issues....

But a child? Let alone your own child?

I can't imagine something like this happening to a child....

An innocent child who asks for nothing more than love.... Nothing more than the acceptance of their parents....

I watch my kids go to sleep at night and everything I do is for them.... There's not a waking moment that I do not want to be with them....

Hey Bendigo.... Do me a favor.... Make your next post about rainbows and puppy dogs, ok? Lets lift the mood a bit.... lol

May 13, 2010 at 3:13 PM

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