A finite number of pictures will be taken of each of my children, this I know. One day, their lives will end, and there will be no more. It’s an odd way to think about death, but as I watch Madeline Alice Spohr’s parents try to negotiate their lives without her, and I see them post the same pictures of her again and again, it struck me. I don’t know them, never new her, but felt like I did. She would be three today. Instead of a picture of a three year old, they have to select one from the seventeen short months they had her. Ah, the pain of the world, the pain everywhere.
And, continuing in the pain theme, did you know that on average, men who kill their wives get 3-5 year sentences, women who kill their husbands get 15 year sentences? My domestic violence class is going to meet a bunch of women who got life sentences without possibility of parole for killing their batterers. Many of them couldn’t afford a lawyer, or they would have been more likely to prove self defense. Statistics further show that the fewer resources a community has for battered women, the more likely they are to kill in order to escape.
Clickety click! Vote for hope!