Sunday, May 29, 2016

God and Death

Over the past year, I have had a number of people in my life die. Some close to me, some were once close but years and age had distanced us and some I barely knew but their death still made an impact on me. The deaths of those from old age and cancer are easier for me to come to terms with. Even though cancer is awful and unpredictable and affects those of any age with no regard to anything whatsoever, at least I can wrap my head around the idea of cells turning on the body and destroying it from the inside. The science of it makes sense to me, even if the emotional loss of the person does not.  And, for the most part, they are long, slow paths to the end, giving friends and family the time to face it and to say their goodbyes.

The worst deaths are those that are sudden and seem preventable. Suicides and murders, specifically. A few weeks ago, I learned of the murder of an 8 year old boy and this brought back the intense sorrow of learning of the suicide just over a year ago of a boy I had been a nanny for when he was 8 years old. That boy had committed suicide just weeks after graduating high school and from all accounts had shown few warning signs of his thoughts of ending it all. I cried for days over the loss of this bright young man who was going to change the world with his love of science and math. Despite the fact that I had not spent time with him in a decade, I can still remember his sweet smile, his laugh and his intelligence. I also remember how much I loved taking care of him and his siblings and being a peripheral part of their family. Hearing that he had ended his life so suddenly, without giving anyone a chance to change his mind was agonizing. I couldn't help asking God "WHY?!" Why did he feel so alone? Why did he leave when his life was just taking off? Why was his family left with this unbearable sense of guilt and loss and shame at not being able to stop this from happening? These are questions that can never be answered so I and all who knew him are left with nothing but the memories and the why of it all.

Three weeks ago, that sense of helplessness and inability to comprehend the loss of a young life came rushing back like a sucker punch to the gut. I found out that a sweet little 8-year-old boy had his life come to an abrupt and painful end at the hands of a family member who should have protected him. This was a case of every aspect of the system failing this kid, other than my friends, who did all they could to protect him and his sisters. After the separation of these kids' parents and subsequent abandonment by their mother (my friend's sister), my friends lovingly and happily took on the task of raising their nieces and nephew. The kids were happy, healthy, safe and loved. Unfortunately, since they were originally from Laos and their father's family was still there, he decided he wanted them to be raised in their home country and took them back, splitting them up amongst family members since he couldn't afford to care for more than one of the children. This little boy had the misfortune to end up with an uncle who was gone more than he was home and an aunt who had little use for a precocious, energetic boy, so she started physically abusing him. My friends tried to stay in contact with all the kids and whenever they went to visit family in Laos, would check in on the kids to make sure they were ok. Despite having two children of their own, they still loved these kids as if they were their own. On the most recent visit, the current guardians of the boy refused to allow them to see him because he always cried after he saw them and it "caused problems" for the new family because he wanted to go back with my friends. Little did they know at the time that the real reason for this refusal was that he was in the hospital with head injuries suffered at the hands of his guardians. A month later, he suffered a beating that left him with several broken bones and ended his life. After realizing what she had done, the aunt had thrown him in the river and told authorities he had drowned. The only good thing to come out of this situation is that this woman is now in jail.

This whole story sent me into a tailspin of heartbreak. I remembered the day I met the kids and how full of joy they were. Every time we had a group meeting, I looked forward to seeing those kids. Even though I didn't know them well, I loved them; it was impossible not to. To think now that I will never see his smiling face again breaks my heart every day. For the first time, it has caused me to ask the question of where was God in this? How could he let this happen? Those kids were in a safe home, happy, loved and all together. How could God let them be torn apart and sent to a home where this boy was anything but taken care of? The thought of that sweet little one spending every day in fear, not knowing or understanding why he was being hurt or when it would happen again, not knowing why his mother and father didn't want him, and worse, having the memory of being in a loving family but now not able to tell anyone what was happening to him for fear of further retribution fills me with such anguish and anger. Anger at the aunt for hurting him, anger at the uncle for turning a blind eye and allowing it to happen, anger at the hospital for not alerting the authorities when he was hospitalized for head injuries, anger at the authorities for not removing him from the situation if they did know, anger at the father for putting his child in harm's way and anger at their mom for leaving them in the first place. And, yes, anger at God for allowing him to be taken out of safety and light and put in a place of darkness and pain. Now, my friends, who did everything they could to keep the kids with them in Thailand, are having to deal with the guilt of letting them go, even though they had no legal standing to keep them here. While the family in Laos is busy blaming each other, the only blameless ones blame themselves.

So, if God is just, where is the justice here? In her arrest and trial? An eight-year-old is still dead. Is 10 years in prison enough to balance out decades of life lost? An eighteen-year-old is dead, sentencing himself to the loss of a future. Maybe there is no justice in those cases, and so we have to seek justice in other ways. In the past week, the ACT team (Children's Advocacy Center, Thailand) made two arrests of foreign pedophiles, with an arrest warrant waiting on the return of a third. We have half a dozen victims now, but probably 50 more victims we don't know about, based on statistics. These men will unquestionably end their lives in a prison cell for what they have done, unable to raise their victim count to triple digits. So, there is a sense of justice there. Is it enough to balance the scales of other lives lost? I don't know, but for now, that knowledge helps me sleep at night.