Pain Is Never Deeper Than A Child’s Death
Wednesday was a day when mood as well as events seemed a match for the hideous, depressing weather that saw Boston sag a bit beneath the unwelcome snow. It was a day that could make even the strongest of the faithful pause over God’s intentions.
Mary Battles, the principal at St. Columbkille’s grammar school in Brighton, called to pass on news that Chris Nieman died early in the morning. He was an 11-year-old boy who fought leukemia with a huge heart and tremendous courage.
Sometimes it is easy to forget that of all the things many of us take for granted, the very fact of life is the easiest item of all to ignore. We expect to wake up each morning. We expect to be healthy. We expect to see the sun, feel the wind, touch our children. All of that is automatic.
Chris Nieman was in fifth grade. He went to school every day until Christmas when he could no longer manage the task. He returned once - Jan. 16 - for his 11th birthday, a day when all his classmates held a terrific party for a brave little boy living on a calendar beyond his control.
“I really do think he is a saint,” Mary Battles was saying. “I’m telling you, he never once complained. He never once asked ‘Why me?’ He never once failed to thank you for getting him a drink of water or changing the channel.”
He died at home, surrounded by his parents and grandparents. He had a baby sister and younger brother. At his death, his mother and father woke up the brother who is in second grade so he could say goodby to Chris, give him a kiss and tell him he loved him and would miss him every day.
It is ironic that every day of the week, a lot of us walk out a door, never looking back, figuring everything is forever: families, friendships, everything. We are often too busy or too weighed down by the inconsequential to realize that the most precious things are often too fleeting.
No matter who you are, what you do, or how much you’re worth, you cannot go out and buy the sight of a smile or the sound of laughter. Life doesn’t work that way.
After hearing about Chris Nieman, I went over to the Area B police station in Roxbury where a whole houseful of cops have thrown themselves at an effort to assist two of their own who carry the unbearable burden of the loss of a child: About four weeks ago, Patrolman Ritchie Porter and his wife lost their three-month-old to sudden infant death syndrome. And Patrolman Billy Shaw’s 12-year-old daughter Kerry - born with cystic fibrosis - underwent a double-lung transplant, but infection ripped through her system and she died Wednesday afternoon.
Policing people is a difficult business. The job easily breeds cynicism and a wary eye cast toward nearly all human behavior. But in a station - Area B - where the hallway as well as the lock-up never wants for bad news, all other cops responded for the two who suffer: When Porter and Shaw were unable to work their shifts, 45 others volunteered to fill in so neither man would lose a day off. When blood was needed for Kerry Shaw’s operation, the police in Area B came forward in such numbers that the need was met in hours.
The little girl lived her life with an insidious disease that robs youngsters of the ability to be truly young. We watch kids run and play. We see them in snow or sand and it never occurs to us that they are so strong they never have to stop to catch a breath, a simple little thing some children find hard if not impossible to do.
I know that there are offices and plants where people eagerly enlist support for co-workers who hit hard times. It’s just that too many seem to focus on a distorted yet fixed portrait of police as being brutal, bigoted, conniving perjurers. Like a lot of things, that portrait is flawed and incomplete. And the idea that cops would come up noble for the 12-year-old daughter of one of their own does not mean they would not - and have not - reacted just as humanely for some poor stranger’s child.
Always, though, it is the death of a child that has the effect - laser-like - of cutting through the clutter that often impedes or obstructs our normal routine. It is hard to feel sorry for yourself once you wake up knowing there are no funeral arrangements to be made for a little boy or a little girl who died without knowing the joy of a base hit, or savoring the thrill of dancing at a junior prom, or experiencing the adolescent anguish of simply staying out too late with the family car.
All of us have our problems, and some are bigger than others. But burying a child offers huge perspective to everyone.
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