How does the death of a young child affect your outlook on life?
There’s a lighthearted question for the beginning of the week. I see the little best man passed away. Does it bother you when a child loses his or her battle with an illness, or has an accident, or whatever takes their life. It just shakes my faith in humanity or life, I’m not sure which. What do you do to restore your faith?
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It depends on the kid and the circumstance. This kid had a fatal illness – no human activity could have stopped it. yes, it’s sad, but it was beyond anyone’s control. It doesn’t destroy me or anything like that.
What pisses me off are the avoidable deaths of kids – car accidents, snakes choking them, parents shooting them, etc, – those make me pity the stupidity of people (mostly parents) and the complete lack of responsibility that most people display.
Does it shatter me? No. But it makes me pity the people who are supposed to be the adults.
No. I feel sad for the parents, it is they who must process their grief and find a way to make peace, but…our ideology that the young should be exempt from dying is unhealthy and unrealistic from a universal and natural/biological perspective.
Death happens, period, and age is not a factor. The notion that infants and children “should” not die is of human emotional construct, not based on the laws of nature.
We are human animals and in nature many young do not survive their first days, weeks and months.
The smaller and weaker are often phased out by their stronger siblings, as in the case of many birds of prey. Baby sea turtles are lucky if only a couple out of dozens make it to the sea before being preyed upon by seabirds, crabs and then, the dangers of what lies beneath the surf.
Young hooved prey animals are the easiest targets for apex predators and many young creatures succumb to disease and injury as do human offspring.
As a mother I can only imagine the pain of losing your child, but as a science and nature nut I have no overly neurotic sentiments about the ways of nature and don’t attach to “shoulds and should nots” when it comes to the harsh realities of of the natural world.
The whole situation (boy who just passed away this morning) breaks my heart.
It just makes me more of a non-believer, more anger directed towards the “higher being”.
@ZEPHYRA No need to feel anger, even IF there is a higher being, they designed the natural world with balance in mind. Nothing to be angry about, it is the way of nature, the cycles and circles of life. Some organisms survive, some do not. Negligent death at the hands of humans that cause untold suffering is an entirely different matter.
It makes me respect my mother even more, she had us 3 boys & along comes a little baby girl. She was born with a heart defect & died aged 10 weeks, I was only 3yrs old at the time & have no memory of the tragedy but would have loved a little sister, alas it was not to be.
We remember our Julie, especially on her birthday & my mum will never forget her memory.
Good on you mum…you’re the best!!
No. Death is tragic no matter the age. Death is something I will welcome, when my time comes.
Could someone post a link to the story about this boy?
Ever since I became a mother, the death of a child hits me harder. It doesn’t really change the way I look at the world or anything, but it makes me incredibly sad.
My brother died when I was young. It has made any kind of loss particularly painful to me and I search for security in life when it doesn’t exist.
It doesn’t change my outlook on life. Our bodies are very vulnerable and our lives and that of our children can end at any moment. Thinking otherwise is delusional.
That really doesn’t bother me much, but I’ve seen what it has done to an old high school buddy of mine.
About 30 years ago my friend’s wife and two young kids were killed in an auto accident. Not only did he never get over it, but it totally destroyed his life. He turned to drugs and worked odd jobs as he floated around the country. At age 61 he has saved no money and owns nothing and is suffering a couple of mental disorders, cancer, diabetes and can’t walk more than few feet because he has no knee cartilage. The V.A. is currently taking care of him as he is a Vietnam Veteran. He told me that one time he went to a graveyard to commit suicide. He said that he put a gun to his head and just before he pulled the trigger, a ghost on a ghost horse rode up to him and grabbed the gun from him. He passed out and woke up the next morning and the gun was gone. Also he visited our o house recently and claimed to be able to see our dead cat roaming our house and gave an accurate description of it.
I don’t think that you can get much more messed up than that poor SOB.
It breaks my heart for their families. I can’t imagine what the parents of those boys who were killed by the snake are going through, or the mother of the baby whose carriage was struck by a light pole that had been knocked down by a bus driver who was reportedly talking on his cell phone. The incident that haunts me the most is the mother whose two young children were swept right out of her arms by the floodwater from Hurricane Sandy. I don’t think I could psychologically survive that.
Yeah, the feeling of letting them down in a bad situation would crush me worse than the thought of losing them to an illness.
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