Loving parents can't save child if tragedy strikes

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

Already it's old news, last week's headlines, one more tragedy in a line of never-ending ones.

It wasn't even a lead story. So many people die every day; the death of a small child 3,000 miles away is a huge and horrible personal tragedy for his parents and family and friends.

But it barely affects the people who didn't know him. It may stun us. We may feel for the parents, identify with them, weep for them, but only for a moment. Our grief is temporary.

For that's the way life is. We turn the page. We read another story. We are immersed in our own families, children, worries, responsibilities. Our lives go on.

And yet, there is something that goes beyond tragic, something numbing and terrifying and totally unbearable about the death of 3 1/2-year-old Joseph Bishop from Newburyport, the only person killed in the California earthquake last week. The only person killed. Why, is what we ask. Why this child?

His parents did everything right. They followed all the unwritten rules. They were a big, happy family. They weren't divorced. Cynthia Bishop is an old-fashioned mother who stays home with her kids. "She took Joseph everywhere," a neighbor said.

The Bishops didn't even leave their children to return to California for their high-school reunion, though it would have been physically easier and far less expensive to leave the kids behind.

But they took three of their four children with them. Only their 19-year-old son stayed at home.

No doubt he was the one they were worried about. Don't have any parties. Be careful driving. Make sure you lock the house at night. Are you sure you don't want to come with us?

Are you sure you'll be all right?

No doubt they worried when they flew, too, because all parents worry then, 30,000 feet in the air. And, of course, they worried when they drove because kids in cars are vulnerable, because who knows who else is on the road.

But, at night, when they are with you in the home of a friend tucked in their sleeping bags surrounded by other children, parents stop worrying. You let your guard down then. Home is the safe zone. The children are in the next room. You can hear them breathing. You can see them. You know they are safe.

That's the delusion, isn't it? The great lie, the enduring myth, that anyone is "safe," that we can protect our children. We can't, you know. We beat our heads against a wall when they fall, when they get sick, when they suffer, when they hurt, blaming ourselves, asking again and again what it is that we did wrong, as if every bad thing that happens to them is our fault.

A child is born with a birth defect and a mother is convinced it's because of some sin she committed or some pill she took or some food she ate.

A child falls off a slide while with a baby sitter and a mother thinks: It's my fault. I should have been there. Then it wouldn't have happened.

A child is struck by a car and it's the same thing. I shouldn't have let him ride his bike. He was too close to the street. We shouldn't have bought a house on a busy street. The should-haves are innumerable.

At 4:58 last Sunday an earthquake struck California.

The fireplace in the living room - where Joseph Bishop and a half dozen other children were sleeping - collapsed. Some of the debris fell on Joseph Bishop and killed the child.

And it was nobody's fault.

If only he had been sleeping in another spot. If only we had left him at home. If only we hadn't gone to the reunion, or stayed with these friends. So many if-onlys, his parents must be thinking.

If only we would recognize that we're not gods and there's a limit to what we can do. We can inoculate and educate and strap in and guide and catch and warn and advise.

But in the end we can't really protect anyone at all. All we can do is love them. And the Bishops did that.