A Great Tragedy

I was catching up on last week’s Dr. Phil and he had a very upsetting story last Friday.  A few years ago, he had a family on whose daughter had disappeared.  The parents suspected her husband had killed her.  There were two young children (3 and 5) and there was a suspicion that the children may have actually seen the father kill their mother.

Last Friday, there was a horrible update.  No further information on what had happened to the wife had come to light.  The husband had lost his final custody battle but was still permitted supervised visitation.  The children ran into the house but he slammed the door on the social worker.  She called the police and before she could even finish explaining what had happened, the house exploded into flames.  The husband and children died.

That would be horrific enough but it gets worse.  There is evidence the children were attacked with an axe before the house burned.  But their cause of death was smoke inhalation.

It is terrifying and saddening to realize how those boys must have died.  My heart goes out to the social worker.  Reports say she is traumatized and devastated and I don’t blame her one bit for what happened.

There was an X-files episode which spoke about Starlight children.  I have no idea if this is a concept they made up or one they borrowed from somewhere but the basic idea is that some divine force collects children who are about to be horribly killed just before it can happen.  In the show, they were taken bodily.  I like the idea of a divine force who collects the souls of children before the worst can happen to them.  Just takes them away, leaving their bodies behind, so they don’t have to experience it.  I hope it’s real because no one deserves to die that way.

As for the father, I have a different hope.  Some people who have had near death experiences have actually described something far closer to Hell than Heaven.  And one of the descriptions talks about experiencing all the pain you’ve ever caused in your lifetime.  Another common description of Hell is that you have to go through loops of impossible tasks or tortures until you’ve learned your lesson.

I’m not a particularly enlightened, forgive everyone kind of person.  I hope that the father is suffering all the pain and horror that he caused.  I hope he is trapped in some kind of loop where he is bleeding and struggling to breathe, terrified and betrayed.  I hope that there is justice for his family in the afterlife because we failed in this one.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the family.  Nothing can ever make what happened okay but I hope they can find some kind of peace in their lives.