stages

Denial, I've read, isn't so bad. It's how we all get along. I'll pretend I don't know, and you feign innocence, and we'll make it from one day to the next. Studies prove it. And if you don't like that, just don't think about it. That's how it works, what makes the world go 'round.

Sigh.

But then of course there's the denial that comes when bad things happen. The oh, no! Couldn't possibly. There must be some mistake. It's the way the mind protects itself or buys some time to adjust. But, I didn't really know that little dead boy, so I didn't go there though of course I wished it weren't true. My daughter, on the other hand, who took care of him some Sundays--I'm afraid she might be stuck in that phase. Or I suppose that's really not it. She's not denying, but she's definitely not thinking about what happened while it's weighed heavily on her mother.

I got angry right on schedule, just as they say I should, but not at the universe, not even at the mother. She had not yet been charged with murder. At the time, just the other day, I was upset because people were talking. Perhaps it's just me, but if one is a supposed professional, a law enforcement officer, or better yet--or worse--a man of the cloth, a so-called shepherd of some inexplicably eager flock, and find oneself in possession of some hot tidbit, some rare bit of fact, not supposition, that would make half an audience lean intently forward while the rest recoiled in shock, should one not then stop. right. there. and seal it up forever? Is that not, in fact, the job?

Being told is the duty, the privilege that comes with position, but telling surely isn't. A life lost is just not a story to be cavalierly passed around. Some things are better left unsaid. Some images people don't need in their minds. At least I think they don't; I know I do not want these unsolicited pictures, these disturbing facts I cannot force from my thoughts.

In the scheme of things some might claim it doesn't matter who told what when; it all came out eventually, and, yes, people are going to talk. When a very young woman is hauled off to jail from a church funeral for the death of her very young son, people are going to talk. They will try to figure out why she chose to protect the abusive father over the innocent boy, as if that never happened before, as if life always makes sense, as if she necessarily thought she was doing right, or even making a choice. The talking, I understand, is inevitable. But any of it inspired by facts shared in confidence--now there's a misplaced word--still makes me mad, and I'll never really let that go. If people think they're better, let them then prove that they are.

My standards are perhaps arbitrary, and I don't equate gossips to killers, but I hate that in all the compulsive whispers the stark reality of a little boy gone fades if not disappears. That even though it's all about his too-brief life, somehow he's not even there. Conjecture and hypothesizing cover up the mourning. That's how people cope, or so it is explained. If only his mother had been able to, not to mention his awful father. Then there'd be no story, no phone calls and hushed voices. No sister lost to the system, no grief, no three times tragedy. Nothing to accept.