It's Pulitzer Time, and the winner this year for feature writing is Gene Weingart who wrote an article about parents who accidentally leave their childern in the car and end up killing them. It happens about 15-20 times a year, and it happens to people from all walks of life. From doctors to gardners.
It is one of the best and most haunting articles, I've ever read. Here is one short excerpt from the piece.
I was that guy, before. I'd read the stories, and I'd go, 'What were those parents thinking?' " Mikey Terry is a contractor from Maypearl, Tex., a big man with soft eyes. At the moment he realized what he'd done, he was in the cab of a truck and his 6-month-old daughter, Mika, was in a closed vehicle in the broiling Texas sun in a parking lot 40 miles away. So his frantic sprint to the car was conducted at 100 miles an hour in a 30-foot gooseneck trailer hauling thousands of pounds of lumber the size of telephone poles. On that day in June 2005, Terry had been recently laid off, and he'd taken a day job building a wall in the auditorium of a Catholic church just outside of town. He'd remembered to drop his older daughter at day care, but as he was driving the baby to a different day care location, he got a call about a new permanent job. This really caught his attention. It was a fatal distraction. Terry, 35, wasn't charged with a crime. His punishment has been more subtle. The Terrys are Southern Baptists. Before Mika's death, Mikey Terry says, church used to be every Sunday, all day Sunday, morning Bible study through evening meal. He and his wife, Michele, don't go much anymore. It's too confusing, he says. "I feel guilty about everyone in church talking about how blessed we all are. I don't feel blessed anymore. I feel I have been wronged by God. And that I have wronged God. And I don't know how to deal with that." Four years have passed, but he still won't go near the Catholic church he'd been working at that day. As his daughter died outside, Read the whole thing.
That is heartbreaking. I don’t have kids but before I read that article I would definitely have thought it was impossible for me to do something like that and that the people who do are dumb…that is clearly not the case.
I think reading the article though reinforced my idea of how I want to live my life – with a healthy level of simplicity. Awareness is key and the more people understand that this could happen to anyone, the more likely they are to be guarded against it.
Wow, this has got to be one of the most gut wrenching things I have ever read/seen/heard. I had no idea this happens so much. I thought one or two times a year max, but 15 to 25?? I believe this is another example of how technology and safety advances can hurt us as much as they help us. Sometimes simpler living is better living.
I have a 3 year old daughter and there is nothing more important on this earth then her. What happened to these people has got to be the most tragic thing that can happen to anyone. To be responsible for your own child’s death has got to be the worst emotional pain I could ever imagine. As a dad I do everything I can to know where she is every second of every day. She’s constantly in my mind and attention 24/7. I know it’s easy to get distracted but I honestly can’t fathom how one forgets a child in the back seat? I’m racking my brain to figure it out, to feel sympathetic, but I just can’t wrap my mind around it. It must be as they said, the perfect storm of distraction, change in routine and unlucky circumstances.
I do know a few parents who seem way too distracted in their personal lives with family drama, work issues, financial woes, etc. etc. I say if life circumstances become so overwhelming that one cannot even remember what they have done with their children, then it’s time for dramatic life change.
In the end there is no good way to deal with tragedies like these. I would say the best thing anyone can learn from them is keep your life in order, take responsibility for your own actions, and remember how precious life really is. At any moment, in an instant, things can all change and the more we all recognize how quickly and easily something truly devastating can happen, the more likely we are to help prevent them.