Mirrors

In Oregon we have been awakened the last two weekends faced with the worst of human behavior in our news and newspapers. We read and cry for the sadness of it all. We listen trying to find some redeeming part of the stories that allow us to explain it all away. Because information should make us feel better but I fear there is no amount of information that will make these stories ok.

In the first story, a young woman appears to have shoved or thrown her children off a bridge in the middle of the night. The drop was 75 feet and the water frigid. The 7 year old survived the fall and found something to hold on to for more than 30 minutes moaning loud enough to wake up nearby river dwellers who got in a boat at 1:30 in the morning to locate the disturbing sounds. Some reports say she held on to her 4 year old brother who drowned. Later the next morning, the police located the mother at the top of a parking garage preparing to jump. The children appear to be like any children. They had friends and family who loved them, neighbors who found them delightful to watch. Mom is clearly affected by the events and looks haggard and very disturbed. They have her on suicide watch. I think she expected to follow her children into the river. The act is still horrific. http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/grand_jury_indicts_amanda_jo_s.html


And then this week a father shot his two children ages 6 and 7 and then himself in a nature reserve less than a mile from my office. Local farmers heard the shots in mid afternoon in quick sequence. The father does not seem to have left a suicide note but did clearly have a plan that was carried out chillingly well.

http://blog.oregonlive.com/hillsboroargus/2009/06/how_does_hillsboro_heal_entire.html

We are left needing some more information…something to help us understand. With every fiber of our being we are driven to protect children, the most vulnerable of our society. We want to educate them and provide decent housing and safe neighborhoods, and we want to make sure that there is good food and full tummies… and of course our children need to have access to medical care and after school programs. We want to make children feel safe and be safe.
There is very little in our experience that tells us we need to protect children from their own parents. However, if you think about it, parents have the opportunity to do the most harm. They can abuse by neglect; they can abuse by being physically or mentally cruel. Parents can fail to provide safe environments for their children and they can expose their children to hurtful people. So much is in the hands of the parents.

Both of these terrible tragedies involved fairly recent marriage breakups. Our state requires parenting classes for all divorcing couples with children. These incidents remind us how very unstable a time it is when couples are divorcing. Those classes go a long way in teaching parents how to be good parents when there is only one person at a time parenting. And during court hearings there is such an adversarial state set where often one is perceived to be a winner and one is a loser. These things all do not bode well for family dynamics. Hopefully those who design these classes will take a closer look at the classes that work with divorced parents to help identify people in crisis.

Lastly, I cannot help but remember many years ago when Susan Smith http://crime.about.com/od/murder/a/susan_smith.htm drowned her little ones and pretended to be just as shocked as the rest of the world. We were horrified then as we are horrified now. But I remember a very shocking sermon as we were grappling with these events. We were looking for reason and explanations and instead we got a mirror. The minister got up and said essentially “there but the grace of God, go I”. What he meant is that many of us if we are honest, will recognize the dark impulses that we have had.. the ones we would not want others to know. There is the moment that we feel like just walking out and skipping dinner, and skipping homework, and not caring who takes a bath and whether the laundry got washed. We want to be far away on a beach with a mai tai and a grass hut and perhaps some meaningful work for people who appreciate us. OR what about those other heinous impulses that flutter thru our minds… just for a second or maybe a minute. Can we not understand a Mom who acts rashly in the moment of the impulse? The Mom who has nothing between her and the impulse to stop it from becoming action? The Dad who has nobody to depend on? Most of us are blessed with resources….between us and those black impulses. We have a partner who we can call and say “I need a break, NOW!” or we call our mother, or maybe trade in a favor from a neighbor, or we go into our bedroom and shut the door and pretend we are alone… just for 5 minutes. But there are many people who have no resources, no close intimate person that they can just say “I need a break” or “I am scared” or “I don’t know how I am going to live thru this” or “I feel so alone and they depend on me”. It is a dark place to be… but a place not so far from where we are.