Monday 3 November 2008

The end of the world news

Becoming a Mum changed a lot of things about me. Superficial things. My hair is no longer poker straight. My stomach is no longer flat. I have a fine collection of stretch marks. I pour milk instead of peas into a pan of boiling water and then wonder what on earth I did it for.

It has changed me emotionally, too. I remember being younger and scoffing at my Mum and younger brother as they watched E.T and cried. Now I get emotional over the Father/Son scenes in A Goofy Movie and could weep buckets watching the Prince of Egypt.

Every day I read the news. I don't skim over the stories with fleeting interest any more, a cursory reaction of shock or sadness. I don't read these stories as just myself. I read them as a Mother.

A family of six all killed in a terrible road accident. A young boy shot as he walked home from football practice. Young people being murdered; murdering each other. I feel for the families of young soldiers, barely out of their teens, who have died in Iraq. I worry for the world my children are growing up in when I hear of the pain people willing inflict on those around them. I'm devastated by anything involving the harm or deaths of children.

It's one of many but this story is haunting me:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7690076.stm

I can't stop thinking about what a terribly sad, short life that little girl lived. My heart aches for her. Tortured and abused by her own family before finally having her little body snapped in two by her Father. I wonder how much the Mother knew. Did she care? Did she attempt to stop it?

Who will remember that little girl now?

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