Today , when I should be feeling elated about my son reaching manhood, turning 21 a beautiful, empathetic, gentle happy boy becoming a man we are so proud of………………..my pride and joy is shrouded with sadness and dispair.

Another mother, Kim Nguyen, is distraut because her son, Van, who she loved, nurtured and watched grow up, has been executed in a foreign country and she has even been denied the small request to hug him one last time.

I’m not condoning Van’s crime, and I’m not going to impose on you my views about the barbarity of the death penalty.

I ask one thing of you today.

Stop, think, connect with the overwhelming grief of a mother who has nurtured a child to adulthood and then had him stolen from her…………..not because of an accident or an illness………..but as the result of something she has had not control over……………..something she could not protect him from………something she could not change.

I sat quitely at 8.30am counting down the minutes until 9am when Van was scheduled to be executed. I thought, I prayed and I cried, as any other mother would, who can only imaging the torment of loosing a child.

So wether you agree with the death penalty……………….wether you think Van deserved what he got……………..it doesn’t matter.

Try to put that aside and spare a thought for his mother, his brother, his family and friends, who today will find no consolation……………and for whom life will never be the same.

Life is so precious and so fragile………………..we do well to remember this and to also remember that none of us know what our futures hold. I hope that none of us will have to deal with the pain of one of our children dying before us……this must be the ultimate wound.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 2nd, 2005 at 8:41 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.