Yes, it ‘can happen to us’

For a long time, I was young enough that I could still think “that (fill in the blank with anything particularly tough or tragic) can’t happen to me.” Then, as I got older, got married, and started having children, those things did start happening, either to me or to someone close to me, so that lovely delusion of the young went “poof.” Bubble popped.

Marissa babyI definitely never expected to be “one of those people” who had a child with Down syndrome. I knew a few people over the years, through church congregations actually, who had a youngster or teen with Down’s in their family, and I really, really never expected to be in that position myself. It was something that happened to other people. Only when I was pregnant with my second child and I picked up the newly delivered copy of the Reader’s Digest that featured the story of Alabama football coach Gene Stallings having a son, John Mark, with Down’s that it hit me — hard — that I could have a child with Down’s too. And sure enough, soon after I had blood work results indicate an amniocentesis would be useful, which confirmed my gut feeling. Yes, I grieved. I was worried, I was sad, I was surprised. But soon after, I accepted this new reality, and, well, you can read a little bit more about my wonderful teen on some other posts.

Dad's camera photos Oct 09 041I also thought my parents would live forever. Only other people’s parents died. When my husband’s mother died just a year after our first child was born, I was sad for my husband and myself, but I still thought it would be a VERY VERY VERY LONG TIME before my parents left this life. It still was 12 years later that I had to go through that heart-rending experience, but it was still far, far earlier than I’d expected to lose one of my parents. My dad was only 71 at the time and very healthy, though a bit of a hypochondriac (yeah, it’s true, Dad.). Now I know just how fragile and unexpected life can be.

This year, a family member ended up paralyzed from the mid-torso down after a surgery. That’s the kind of event I have certainly never pictured happening to me, and to have it happen to someone I care about is something that weighs on my mind. My thoughts are with her so much. Sure, you read about these kinds of things, but … having it happen to someone close is still unthinkable. Until it happens, and it’s always in your thoughts.

I’ve now had friends lose children, a very particular kind of heartbreak. We lost the bishop of our ward, our local church congregation, three years ago this month, to a fatal shooting. It was headline-grabbing news, the kind that strikes your heart when you read about it happening to strangers. Having it happen in your own church building, to someone you know, to a family that’s extraordinary … well, it strikes your heart and stays there permanently.

Yep, here I am in my 40s and I’ve left behind those days of “it happens to other people.” Whatever “it” is, it can happen to me, my family, my friends. Life is fragile. It’s unpredictable. It can bring tragedy and pain and grief. Yet, at the same time, every day of life is also a miracle. It can bring refreshing rain or warming sunshine. It can even create rainbows. And when life offers up “those things” to each of us, we face the grief, we work through the pain, we move on. But we don’t have to do any of it alone. I find it such a blessing every day to know I have friends and family to turn to when life serves up the unexpected. And I try to make sure I’m there for them when they face “those things.” When “it can’t happen to us” turns into “it does happen to us,” we have each other.

How did this tragic news item slip by me?

It’s been six months since this incident but somehow I have managed to miss any news of it. And it’s certainly the type of story that should have lit up my Facebook newsfeed and the blogosphere: a man in his 20s with Down syndrome died of asphyxiation after a scuffle with off-duty sheriff’s deputies who tried to forcibly remove him from a second showing of a movie. Just reading this makes my heart seize up and fall a few inches within my chest and makes me want to scrub the knowledge of it from my mind.

Robert Ethan Saylor is the young man with Down syndrome who died after an encounter with off-duty deputies; this family photo ran in the Washington Post.
Robert Ethan Saylor is the young man with Down syndrome who died after an encounter with off-duty deputies; this family photo ran in the Washington Post.

How is it that in the intervening months this hasn’t been passed around more? How did I miss it? Somehow I know that Kanye and Kim named their baby girl North West (just confirming yet again why I do not watch their shows/buy their products or support them in any way, monetarily or with my viewing/listening time), but I didn’t know that a young man with mental disabilities who idolized the police died because of people’s lack of training or sensitivity or understanding or … I don’t know what. I love this editorial from the Washington Post: where’s the outrage, indeed?

As the mother of a nearly-15-year-old daughter with Down’s, who is getting to be a full-size adolescent (still quite short, which isn’t unusual, but a solid 85 pounds), and who certainly has her own opinions and desires that sometimes don’t quite mesh with mine (which isn’t unusual for an adolescent, either!), I am honestly just sickened by this.

I can totally see this happening to her if she were in the same situation: went to see a movie she really liked, decided to just stay seated for a second show, makes a bit of a fuss about being asked to leave. Even if I have explained to her some of the societal norms and expectations for this, she either may have forgotten, not understood, or just chosen to forget. So she stays. Some security officers at the mall who happen to also be sheriff’s deputies or police officers (who in this case aren’t even in any kind of recognizable uniform) tell her to leave; she stubbornly digs in her heels and stays. They pick her up and she resists (wouldn’t you?), and she somehow ends up asphyxiated. It’s a nightmare scenario, all the more so because it’s so easy to imagine happening.

What’s more sickening is knowing that if just one of those officers/deputies had any experience spending time with someone with a mental disability, they might have just simply quietly sat and waited. Waited for someone in uniform, talked to someone who knew the young man, taken a moment to make a phone call, just waited for him to stop panicking or being scared, throwing a fit, whatever. Even just let it pass; was it worth tossing him out of the theater? My daughter, even in situations at home where she’s throwing a little tantrum, tends to recover within a couple of minutes and then just nicely go about doing what I’ve asked, as if she never resisted. So simple, so safe.

So, as the Post asks: Why did Robert Ethan Saylor die? Where is the outrage? Here’s the Post’s editorial on the topic that just ran a couple of weeks ago: I know I’d like to make this news more widely known.