Saturday, May 06, 2006

This Mortal Coil

I wrote earlier about the change one goes through in hearing about tragedies that befall kids when one becomes a parent. This week I was reminded again of this, by two parents who have gone through something terrible and are trying to use it to influence others.

Our hometown had a Town Hall meeting this week to address concerns around Underage Drinking in the community. I won't bore you with details, as addressing this and issues like it are part of my job, but needless to say we are a community where this is an issue (the bad new, of course, is all communities fall into this category).

Two parents attended the meeting that I had met recently, and once again they shared their experience which is still so fresh in their minds. I couldn't possibly put into words appropriately what their experience was like losing their son, but fortunately I don't have to: you can read (and see) about it -- just click on the title of this entry and it'll take you to the story.

What I will repeat is the quote that is at the end of their letter. Jason's father mentioned in his speach, and I find it resonates with me as a new parent who has been trying to articulate the love, care and concern that I feel for this little creature who just over a year ago was only an abstract concept.

“You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.” -Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Leave it to JK Rowling to put the right words together on that one.

(Apologies to those friends and fellow bloggers who saw the title and thought, 'finally -- Vampdaddy's gonna blog about his 4AD fetish!' Maybe next time...)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If you were going to start naming your blog entries after musical artists, I was going to suggest you go back and change the previous entry to "Infant Apollonia".