Suffer the Little Children

9 months ago I stood over the hospital bed and held the hand of a child who would be removed from life support later that day.

2 months ago I watched his mother plead guilty to the actions which led to the serious bodily injury which ultimately led to his death, and four weeks ago, and again today, I watched the sentencing hearing which determined her fate in her role in his death.

I heard a therapist testify to the family counseling he provided to the family to deal with what they reported as Christopher’s mental illness and behavior.

I heard one police officer testify about how he found padlocks on the outside of Christopher’s bedroom door, and scratches on the inside, where he tried to get out. I heard another officer testify how his mother and father brought him to the police station the year before he died, asking how they could get rid of him.

I heard Christopher’s mother testify to using food deprivation as a means of behavior modification, continuing the deprivation even after realizing it was not an effective form of discipline. I would withhold meals but “no more than 3 times a day” she said. But she thought that was okay because she would only withhold food when he was bad. He could eat when he would behave. But this little boy with the mental illness and the behaviors caused by the severe abuse and neglect he had suffered for years? He didn’t know how to behave enough to keep himself alive.

I heard his grandfather testify of having seen Christopher three weeks before his death and being so concerned about his appearance that he told his daughter and son in law to get him to the doctor the next day, but  never following up to make sure they did. And that he hadn’t seen him for six months prior to then, because he wouldn’t allow him to come to his home because he threw things in his brand new pool. I listened to his bitterness at having the surviving children removed from the family, because of his and his wife’s failure to intervene, and how he didn’t know what more could be done to his daughter as “Y’all have already taken anything that mattered to her.” I heard him vilify Christopher saying “He could make somebody a raving lunatic if he so chose.”

I heard the medical examiner testify that what might have caused this child’s death was the head injury he received caused by blunt force trauma. Or it might have been caused by the seizures he suffered, that were left untreated, for hours on end, while he was left unresponsive by himself at home, while his father went back to work after his mother had left to take his siblings to their grandparents. Or it might have been caused by the starvation that caused him to be the smallest 12 year old she had ever seen, weighing only 38 pounds at his admittance to the hospital, and so emaciated that his knee joints were the widest parts of his legs, and lanugo covered his gaunt, shrunken body, with the muscle mass so depleted that he was just a collection of skin, bone, and organs.

As I sat there, I thought of the small boy that I stood over those months ago. I remembered my pain and my sadness and my musings of whether this child had ever been cherished or loved. And the more that I heard, the more I believed that he probably never had.

The judge sentenced Christopher’s mother to 50 years in prison. For starving to death, over several months’ time, this child she should have loved. This child she should have sacrificed everything for. This child she should have done everything in her power to protect and care for. This child she should have valued but instead reviled.

And I felt not a thing.

I thought that I would feel a sense of relief or closure.

What I felt instead was a great sense of emptiness.

At Christopher's death, yes.

But also at the misery that was his all too short, all too tortured life.

And the lives of his surviving siblings who, even now, are beginning to realize the magnitude of what they saw and experienced.

And I wondered, as I have wondered on more than one occasion in these last months, what was the purpose of this child’s existence.

What good came of his having lived.

What good came of his having died.

The wondering has yet to lead to an answer.

I wonder if it ever will.