Barnabas Monkeypants

It’s sort of a cliche, but it’s one that rings very true. I didn’t know how much I was going to love Henry until I saw him for the first time (poo covered, naturally), and this love has only grown.

I hope that every parent feels the same way, but I know it’s not true, and this kills me. It doesn’t make me weepy, like when I see service dogs, though; for this, I get angry.

Parents are there to protect their children, to nurture them, to teach them so that they grow up to be the best adults possible. Isn’t that our job?

Anyway, I mention this because I read a newspaper story yesterday about a father killing his daughter (and also his soon-to-be ex-wife, his sister, and his nephew). This is all too common lately. Last week, here in Illinois, a father did not return his two young sons to his ex-wife after a scheduled weekend visit and instead killed them and then himself, and just a few days later there was a murder-suicide in Santa Clara, California.

I just don’t understand this.

I can see how someone, mad at their spouse, would want to hurt them. (Note: In no way do I advocate this and I have never, ever, EVER felt this way about Kristen, but I can see how someone might feel this way, just not act on it.) It’s a completely irrational, over-the-top emotion (not to mention immoral), and people who think this way should get help.

For that person to take the next step and actually go through with it means that there is something seriously wrong with their noggin. But (again, this is not me condoning their behavior) that person can almost rationalize it –  “She was going to leave me. I had no other option. She was cheating.” — without them sounding bat-shit crazy. They are bat-shit crazy and should be locked up for good, but this is, unfortunately, not out of the ordinary and certainly nothing new. (Heck, just watch 48 Hours Mystery every Saturday night like we do and you’ll see how horrible some people can be. What? You think we go out on Saturday night?)

But the worst of the worst are those men (it’s usually men, isn’t it) that decide that they not only want to kill their spouse, but they also want to kill their children too (or just the children). This also usually ends with them killing themselves after.

Now obviously there are other things at work here — likely some sort of mental illness or severe depression — but how could anyone ever want to kill their kids? That man in Illinois’ children were 7 and 9 years old. They were innocent in every sense of the word, yet this guy, in an attempt to get back at his ex-wife, wanted the rest of her life to be worse than miserable.

I hope that this rash of killings is isolated, that it’s more copy-cat than a new trend. Because the news is depressing enough as it is; I don’t need to read another story like those for a long, long time.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Worry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.