My heart goes out to everyone on the East Coast who has lost power, property, and in a few cases, loved ones, due to Hurricane Sandy. I sit here in mostly Sunny California (OK, it rained last night during Halloween, but it doesn't blip on the inconvenience scale) and truly feel for everyone in the Tri-State area.
But I feel a deeper sadness for a horrific tragedy that occurred just a few days before. One so painful that I can't even read an entire story about it or link to it--the tragic slaying of two children by their nanny. One that leaves me in tears when I even read a headline about it.
Today I did something foolish. I ventured to a follow-up story that showed pictures of the two slain children, and comments from readers. As soon as I saw these pictures the tears flowed again. Even before I became a mother I grieved for senseless loss of young life, whether due to illness or to the inane perversions that crept into a troubled adult's mind. I've never been able to resolve these instances. I don't get closure; I simply put them someplace in my mind where they can't be seen quite so often. I try, anyway.
I read some comments from equally horrified readers who, like me, grieved. I also read comments that made me sick; sick because they cruelly attempted to intellectualize what happened. Perhaps, some said, if this presumably wealthy family hadn't been so cheap and saddled a foreign, presumably low-paid woman with three children to care for, this would not have happened.
I can't believe what some of us will do to try to make sense of tragedy. Some have to find someone to blame--some sane reason to explain the inexplicable so that, perhaps, the rest of us can avoid such horror. No one deserves something like THIS to happen, these commenters argue, but perhaps if they had just realized what they were doing, they suggest, their children would be alive.
I cannot stomach such cruelty, and not because I am also a working parent who relies on outside childcare like this family. You don't even need to be a parent to understand that there is no "should haves" in this situation. It's simply horrific. I haven't blogged for months--been a little busy with the new little one. But reading this story, and then looking down at mydaughter sleeping on my lap, I had to start typing.
