http://tinyurl.com/asd49z
Do not read this story if you are in a particularly emotional place right now. In fact, honestly, don't read it at all, frankly.
Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post's heartbreaking, emotional, gorgeous piece of journalism about parents who accidentally leave children behind in the car for long enough to cause the child's death.
And people, before you say, "I would never do that," just remember that everyone in the piece said that too. Before they did.
(h/t NPR's Peter Sagal (petersagal.com/wordpress)
I read that on Salon. It was terribly sad. I do the morning drop offs. Normally, I drop the kids and then the husband... but then it's when the norm is out of whack. Hopefully, my safety training and paranoia from watching too many death dramas will keep me from leaving a child behind. I always sit for just a couple of minutes in the car to take a deep breath, switch from home keys to work keys, and check that everything is okay and I haven't forgotten anything.
ReplyDeleteMine is 12, now, so if I leave him behind, he'll say, "HEY!".
ReplyDeleteBut what absolutely chilled me was, like I said-every single one of them thought it wouldn't happen to them. That kind of guilt I can't even imagine.
Thinking back to the sleep deprived infant years, though-I wasn't always thinking clearly. Closest I came was driving off with a diaper bag still on the roof.
While I didn't do it, reading this made me imagine I possibly could have, and it chilled me to the core.
Glad to have you here!