As a parent one can't help think about what 'could' happen. Tragic anecdotes of impromptu fatal child accidents fill you with mass dumpings of fear and anxiety. Sometimes over-protectedness streamlines a semi-caustious eye into an ever-anticipating accident-preventive parental nut. A feather-soft bonk on the head becomes 911 trauma-rama; and a sniffly nose becomes a symptom for the plague of death.
But when these terrible accidents do happen, I'd like to think I'd be able to handle it the way Wesley's parents did. Wesley died in a freak accident. It was nobody's fault. His bicycle helmet got caught on a swing chain while playing on his playground in his fenced-in backyard. The chin strap strangled him.
His obit celebrates his short life:
Even as an infant, on Sunday mornings, his mommy and daddy and sissy taught him to dance in a little cottage on Imperial street. In the years he traversed this earth, he continued to dance with a rhythm in his steps and a song in his heart...To parents, his father incites:
Wesley went to Disneyland for the first time in his life this past Christmas, where he waved at Santa Claus and napped on his dad's lap in the ice cream parlor in between fun. It was on this vacation where Wesley first placed his little toes in the ocean near Diver's cove in Laguna Beach. He said: "Dad CAN-I-FORNIA is the best trip I've ever been on."
Wesley was also introduced to skiing for the first time this year. He loved every minute on the snow with his mom, sissy and very special friends.
Wesley was a student at the Jewish Community Center early child development program and was loved by his teachers.
We ask that all who read this hold your children a little tighter tonight. Give them their dreams. Look them in the eyes every day and tell them you love them.
I work with Wesley's Aunt Jill. Jill's 2-and-a-half-year-old son Logan wants to know what's wrong with Wesley. "How come Wesley's not here?" Logan asked at the funeral. The two boys and another cousin were best buddies and known within the family as the three amigos. "I'll be batman and Wesley will be Spiderman when he comes over," Logan says. Logan, although appropiately told by his parents about what happened with Wesley doesn't understand. "Oh, you mean he got hurt, I'll make him better," Logan says. Jill, the usual personification of giddy positivity feels burdened by relating --in comprehendible two-year-old fashion-- the truth about Wesley.
Variants of pressure live abundantly in the lives of parents. Stress can steal sleepy time and sufficate daylight hours. It can peruse the mind even during nonchalant moments and lead to excessive worry and rumination. It can but it doesn't have to. Unfortantetly, accidents happen. In the meantime celebrate living.
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