‘Lost children of Imperial County’ … and parents

When children hurt, sometimes we do assign them a different level of attention based on what pains them. It’s a sad and inevitable fact, yet it’s not something anyone does consciously.

It’s a snap judgment, an arbitrary decision, and one that is almost completely fueled by the high emotion of a tragic event.

So yes, we might just “coddle” the child of a dead parent more than the child of divorce or the young victim of a family crippled by drug abuse, separated by military service or even an inattentive parent.

And it is by no means intentional. But, gosh, it feels like it is — to the child, to the parent, maybe even to a part of the community looking in from the outside.

We get hundreds of letters to the editor sent to this newspaper every year, and many of them never make the light of day for various reasons. Recently, we were emailed an anonymous letter titled “The lost children of Imperial County” without a return email address that had neither a place on our Opinion page nor as a Probe question. Those types of letters are sometimes saved, sometimes deleted, but this one sent a very real chill up my spine and compelled me to, I don’t know, do something, if only to write this.

It was from a parent in so much pain, because his or her child was in so much pain, and it read like a case study in broken homes, broken hearts and misplaced anger. To quickly summarize, the parent, a mother, drew the comparison between the level of compassion the children of a recently passed educator are getting, to what she believes to be the lesser level of compassion for children from homes in which a parent has “left” through divorce, drug abuse or abandonment.

She is so angry, railing against the world for the pain her child is being put through following an obviously painful and ugly divorce. “Does my son get coddled at school by teachers and staff? No. Is my son grieving for his father? Yes. … Does anyone care? No. Because that is society’s reaction to a child’s loss of a parent.”

It is a brutally frank, well-reasoned and ultimately heart-wrenching letter to read, and on a personal level it made me think about my childhood. I was a child from a broken home, dad out of the picture, family left bruised and battered by substance abuse and, me, a child who took that to school with him, acting out in various ways, and taking it to heart and head.

Yet it also reminded me of my place as an adult and a parent, one who sees similar inequities, all very natural emotions and thoughts best left unexpressed. In the end, it’s all an academic exercise that will leave any rational adult reeling and in a more confused place than they are already in.

How does one process the emotions of a parent and a child in pain at the same time, where one is too young and too immature to understand the hurt and the other too psychologically scarred to acknowledge the roots of their own pain or their role in it?

“So what makes the 5-year-old child who suffers the death of a parent any different than the child whose parent leaves them due to immaturity or drug addiction never to return? Or the child who is taken away from the parents due to neglect or abuse never to be reunited?” she writes.

“There is absolutely no difference. The child is suffering. The child is grieving. The child is trying to understand why this happened to them. The child wonders were they good enough? What did they do wrong? Did they not try hard enough? Why didn’t mommy and daddy love me enough?”

Is there anyone that doesn’t read that last paragraph and see: The mother is suffering. The mother is grieving. The mother wonders if she were good enough. What did she do wrong? Did she try hard enough? Why didn’t daddy love her enough?

I don’t know who to feel for more, the unarticulated pain of her child, or the blood on the page of this embattled woman. And how can she be expected to see clearly, to understand the differences between who is “coddling” whom, when she needs some coddling herself.

This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, May 16, 2014.