Coulda Shoulda 7-5-01

North Miami Beach, FL July 5, 2001 Aaron H.
Schectman

THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on issues, ideas and reflections on the times. Published now and
then, Opinions pro or con are welcome.
COULDA SHOULDA

The woman who drowned her five children put me in mind of a friend of many
years ago. She didn't drown her only child. She jumped off a roof and
denied her loving husband and a brand new daughter of her presence for the
rest of their lives. Her husband remarried and gave his child a vastly
different new mother.

She was recently married, the first of our group of five couples to have a
child. She was the cause of great deep interest on our part and vicariously
we were introduced to parenthood until she climbed that roof and ended,
what? She ended our belief in the perfectibility of young marrieds despite
the breaking in period we all went through of learning how to be married and
how to look forward to children, to family.

You never know. We thought she was happy, her husband was happy and we
were happy for her. She was actually "taken" from all of us by some urge to
be far away from a normal, beautiful and crying baby girl. Her nervous
reactions to her motherhood were not alarming since we thought that was one
of the expected outcomes of a fun-loving, free and lovely girl facing caring
for a normally squalling child.

Gloria (that was her name) made a difference by her death. She could have
continued to be a pathfinder for the rest of us who may have delayed having
children by her choice. We believed we should have been aware of what could
happen in our own lives. Maybe we could have helped.

The men had all been to war and had come back. We had all been to college
and were well educated. We were of the middle class and lived by middle
class standards. We were all in need of friends and had found one another
in a classic meeting at a resort hotel in the Poconos in a rare outing and
vacation and we enjoyed each other so much.

Gloria was the first of our group to bring forth life. She could have
given us more than her death. We should have known more and could have
helped. What do you think? Carol's Evaluation: 8 out of 10.