Raging Dad

I read the headline from the Minneapolis StarTribune with horror: “‘Kill me!’ a mother begs police after a terrible act.” The story was about a 60-year-old mother who tried to kill her two 11-year-old adopted girls. According to the article, she “savagely attacked her two daughters and then stabbed herself, two months after she was hospitalized because of her own fears that she might harm them,” (StarTribune, 8/22). One girl was in critical condition for days, her throat slashed and her body stabbed multiple times. The other girl managed to escape, but not before being struck with an ax multiple times. Her mother allegedly told her, “I’m a bad mom … I had to do this.” When police arrived, the mother had stabbed herself in the neck and begged officers to kill her. Officers reportedly found a handwritten note in the house that read, in part, “sorry, I can’t deal with them anymore.”

My first reaction was that I cannot imagine the state of mind that this woman had to be in to have tried to kill her children. After thinking about it some more, I felt very sad for the woman, the kids and the entire situation.

Raging Mom and I had a neuroscience professor in college who used to say that emotional health is a continuum. Some people fall at the extremes; most people fall somewhere in between. My favorite quote of his: “There is a fine line between the person strolling through the quad, and the person on top of Old Main with a sniper rifle.” I believe that is true. I think it would be dishonest to say that I can’t possibly understand how a parent could do something so terrible. I can. That doesn’t mean that I sympathize with this woman, but I don’t think that it is all that surprising. It is simply a matter of certain tragic ingredients combining at a particular moment, and causing a reaction that had no counter agent.

There have been times when I have felt like I could snap. I think most parents have had to put themselves in a “time out,” or have walked away from a screaming child rather than continue to get worked up. However, I (and most parents) have managed to maintain control. I am fortunate to have a supportive wife and friends. And a job, and a house. I had a good therapist, but he moved on to work with depressed geriatric patients, which I am not. I guess I’m in the market for a new one!

I don’t believe in fate or divine guidance. I think a person’s biology and situational environment just may not be configured in a way to cope with the shit that life deals out. Perhaps action is required to prevent yourself from becoming the student on top of Old Main, the mother with the axe and kitchen knife. The woman in the article, like other parents who commit heinous acts of violence on their children, obviously was struggling in tremendous ways, financial, emotional and otherwise. It is too easy to say that she is evil; that’s not it. This profoundly depressed parent lacked a support structure, a form of assistance, a balance of chemicals in the brain that might have helped her to not become a national headline, and might have prevented her children from experiencing horror from which they will likely never recover.

What a tragedy.

Song of the day: “Where the Wild Roses Grow,” Nick Cave & the Badseeds.