I’ve always been the type of person so affected by 24/7 bad news that I simply don’t turn it on much and prefer to read the latest happenings without the commentary and horrible live feeds of the latest violence.
But the other week as I read the news, I came across the story of a local infant, missing from my county. Little Kaylynn Crawford was reportedly taken from her father’s car while he was in a store. We now sadly know that is not the truth. Her tiny body was recovered from the Little Miami River and her father arrested in connection with her death. I was glued to the tv as reporters described the sad scene and I realized along with them that this beautiful baby was not going home to her mother.
I do not know all of the details about what happened. None of us do. But I do know that it was one of those days that seems extra cruel to mothers. My thoughts are with her mother and the family that loved Kaylynn. The hope and promise of a child is something I never truly understood until I was a mother myself. And losing that? Unimaginable.
Becoming a mother means such wonderful things: All of the firsts. The sloppy kisses. The birthdays. But the flip side is a sore easily exposed by stories such as this. It means becoming a mother to every child who falls on the playground and needs a hand or who is lost and looking for her mother in the grocery store. It means that when something horrible happens to a child, we all hurt. And when it’s literally close to home, it hurts that much more.
As cliche as it seems, I hugged my own child a little tighter. I felt thankful for my marriage, in which nothing that could ever happen could ever be bad enough to harm a child over. I thought about how different the lives of other children are.
And while I know things like this happen each and every day, I wonder why it happened here.
