February 23: Tiny Tim, Sick Child, Teenage Suicide

A father's love

He sat very close to his father's side upon his little stool.  Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.

This passage is about Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit, obviously.  It touches upon the fear of any parent:  a sick child.  It's even worse for a parent if s/he can't do anything to make the child well.  All the parent can do is be Bob Cratchit and sit by the child, holding a "withered little hand."

Charles Dickens was very familiar with this situation.  He had a daughter, Dora Annie, who died around the age of one.  Although A Christmas Carol was written before the child's death, Dickens had experienced the death of several other close loved ones already.  He knew first-hand of the desperation and helplessness expressed in the paragraph above.

There really isn't anything worse to contemplate than the illness of one of your children.  One of the scariest sounds in the world for me is my son coughing in his crib in the middle of the night.  He is just getting over a really nasty cold, and I've spent the last week listening to him struggle for breath while he slept.  When my daughter was three, she got such a bad bladder infection that she had to be hospitalized.  I'll never forget sitting in the emergency room, holding her, her body blazing hot and her face white as rice paper.  I've never felt so completely powerless in my life.

In the last month or so, there's been several teenage suicides in the area where I live.  I haven't known any of the kids or their families, but I'm aware of some of the circumstances.  Regardless of the reasons these young people have taken their lives, however, it's tragic.  Suicide is a very permanent solution to a very temporary problem.  Usually.

At work this morning, my coworkers were discussing suicide.  Some of my coworkers were of the opinion that suicide is a completely selfish act.  Others were of the opinion that suicide is an act of desperation by a person who is in incredible physical or psychological pain.  I kind of think it's both of those things.  An act of selfishness and an act of deliverance.

In the end, it really doesn't matter, as I said before.  In the end, there are simply a lot of Bob Cratchits in the world who are sitting next to empty stools, wondering how they could have saved their Tiny Tims.  That's the real tragedy.

Saint Marty's saying a few prayers for the Bob Cratchits of the world this morning.