It Could Have Been Us (A Very Sad Blog Post)

A few days ago, my husband put short person in the car to take her to the babysitter. As tired as he has been, he was several miles past the turn off before he remembered she was asleep in the backseat. He turned around and dropped her off and made his way to work.

Yesterday, as I was trying to think outside the box on how to get Jake a LOT of votes for the Real World, I logged on to KATU's website. Over on the side bar, under most read stories, was the link to an article about a baby that died because he was left in the car on a very hot day.

Most stories like this are... "Oh, I'll only be a minute in the store, and she's asleep..." and of course, a minute turns into an hour and tragedy strikes.

This was not that kind of story. This was way worse because it hit so close to my home.

The father of four children loaded them all in the car. The first three he took to school and dropped them off, the baby was to go to daycare. He arrived at work, went into the building, and forgot the baby was asleep in the car. In Tennessee that day, temperatures were in the 80's.

The car had an internal motion device, which tripped the alarm off several times, but when he looked outside and saw no one near the car, he turned off the alarm remotely. Seven hours later, when it was time to pick up the other kids from school, he discovered his son.

I read the article and that knot of fear settled into the base of my spine. Two days ago, that could have been us.

Never before have I felt compelled to send a card, or a gift, or anything else in condolence of a stranger's tragedy, but sitting on the table beside me is a print-out of the man's name and the address of the company where he works.

He should know, even though it could never ease the pain, that it could have happened to anyone. Us.

They are charging him with homicide.