Memorial

Tomorrow I will be attending a memorial service for three good kids. Their names are Shaneika, Latricia and Christopher Ward. They were 11, 9 and 8. They were friends of Joshua's. They were honor roll students. Their bodies were found February 4th in their apartment, fully dressed, each in their own bedrooms lying on the floor. Cause of death: starvation and dehydration. They had been dead for at least a week. They were murdered by their own mother.

I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help Joshua through this, or myself. We are both major compartmentalizers and sharing grief openly is something neither one of us is very good at. But this hurts deeply. It hurts Josh because these were friends of his and this kind of thing should not happen to kids (even though we as adults know that it does). He doesn't understand how someones momma could do this to her children and I don't either.

This was not a momentary lapse of reason on the mother's part. This was something that was thought out and carried through. This took more than a moment; this took time. Time that she could have stopped it, time that she could have changed the course of her actions. And she did not. This was not mental defect. This was evil, pure and simple.

If the pressure was too much, why didn't she give her kids up? I mean, it's not like she was worried about people thinking poorly of her.

As a mother, I could not possibly begin to think of doing something like that to anyone's children, much less my own. I just cannot understand the reasoning behind this.

And so, I have to try to make a child see some sort of reason or hope behind this, when I don't see any myself. Wish me luck.

I'm gonna go hug my kids now.

Peace alllllll.............