An indictment of our mad lives

No parent should ever witness the death of their children… and yet it happens. That is the nature of life. Children die, leaving grieving parents and siblings behind, trying to pick up the pieces of a life that must go on. In these circumstances, the void left behind is often filled with a screaming silence: Why did this have to happen to our child?

People have different ways of rationalising the pain caused by the death of a child. Getting over it is not an option. Getting used to it is a hard slog.

But when the death of a child is the result of tragic circumstances, the parents’ pain is deeper, the remorse punishing and the scar everlasting. The million what ifs that accompany such a loss are but answerless questions that will forever torment the parents.

The latest tragic incident involving a one-year-old boy has understandably shocked the country. Here was a mother, like thousands of other women and men, who had to drop off her son at the childcare centre before heading to her workplace at Mater Dei Hospital. For some reason, she got alienated and forgot her son inside the car. She discovered him dead some six hours later when she went to pick him up from the childcare centre only to realise that she never dropped him off.

It is painful to even try and comprehend the child’s agonising death and even harder to understand what the boy’s mother and father are passing through.

Many passed judgement on the woman; cruel words that serve no purpose but to perpetuate the agony and the guilt.

And yet many others, mostly parents with young children, have shown incredible understanding. The tragedy could have happened to anyone caught in the mad rush of life. Parents juggling full-time jobs, house chores, home loans, bills, shuttling of children for after school activities, school meetings, parent WhatsApp chats, family messaging groups, work emails, countless to-do lists, driving grandparents to hospital appointments, quick grocery store stops, all on very little sleep—it has become all a mad rush. And in this chaotic existence, tragedy is very often averted only by chance. But when tragedy does strike, the loss is unimaginable and the guilt punishing.

In these circumstances the mother, the father, the siblings need empathy. In these circumstances saying nothing is better than trying to say something stupid. In these circumstances there are very few words that can console the grief. Most parents would know this.

To the keyboard warriors writing on social media from behind the comfort of their screen: Your judgement is not solicited—shut up!

There is a police investigation and a magisterial inquiry underway—after all, a child has died and the state has a responsibility, on all our behalf, to determine whether there are grounds for responsibility to be shouldered. The police and the magistrate need the space to establish the facts—not an easy thing to do when having to confront a grieving mother in such circumstances. The exercise of justice must be allowed to take its course, without fear or favour and with a lot of empathy. Whether the case warrants prosecution is something the police and the magistrate will have to eventually decide. We trust their judgement to be fair and grounded in law.

As for the mother, whatever the inquiry determines, life has already passed its cruel judgement. She does not need our empty words to comprehend the tragedy that has befallen her family. What she needs right now is support and understanding.

As for the rest of society, this incident is an indictment of our mad lives. A painful reminder of the need to slow down and to look out for one another; to show more empathy. No child has to die because of life’s chaos and no parent has to pass through such a horrible tragedy.