Mimi

On the fourth of July in Mustang, Oklahoma an eight year old boy came home to find his families elderly and beloved pet Pug Mimi dead in their backyard. Mimi, nearly blind and weighing under sixteen pounds, was lying in a puddle of her own blood with a large gash on her forehead. The culprit is an employee of Oklahoma Natural Gas, a worker who stated he killed the dog to defend himself when it viciously attacked him. There were no bites found either on the defendant or on his clothes. The family and all that have known Mimi state that such aggression had never been witnessed in the dog's lifetime and have stated publicly that such an attack is so outrageously uncharacteristic, that it sounds like little more than a fallacy.

I would like to comment personally on this event, if for no other reason than to unburden myself from this sadness. Why the Dog? I don't understand the chain of logic that would possess a man to so brutally end the life of such a creature. She was old, nearly blind, a part of a family that loved and cared about her, a part of a child's life. And that child came home on the fourth of July to find his pet, his friend dead in the backyard. Not from old age, not from some obscure disease, from a steel toed work-boot and a man who came to check their gas meter. I want to know why? Did it make him feel like a bigger man ending a life? Did it make him feel powerful? Because it makes me sick. Violence and death are a part of our daily lives, but the killing of Mimi was tragic, senseless, and reprehensible.

3rd

A thirteen year old boy died yesterday. His name was Seth Walsh. He was found Sunday, September 19th unconscious, unresponsive, and not breathing. He had tried to hang himself from a tree....A 13 year old kid. He was kept alive on life support up until yesterday when his family decided it was best to let him pass. A 15 year old boy named Billy Lucas hung himself in his grandmother's home in Greensburg, Indiana on September 9th. And just six days ago Asher Brown, a thirteen year old kid from Houston, Texas came home from school early while his parents where still at work. Got his father's gun and shot himself in the head.

What's the first question to ask when tragedies like these occur? Many are quick to look for someone to blame, and why wouldn't they be? If such a senseless loss of life could have been avoided why wasn't it. Why didn't someone help them? I am about to subject myself to the sin of over simplification but please bear with me. These boys all had a common denominator, a link that while some may see as circumstantial I see as a glaring indication of a much greater social dilemma. These children were openly gay. Each of them had undergone excessive and aggressive bullying for a number of years from the children around them. If you need to know the end result of that torment., The end result of a homosexual child being forced to endure constant ridicule on a daily basis for being who they are. Then you need look no farther the memorial service being held for Seth Walsh this Friday.

Some find the act of suicide repugnant. A perversion of the natural order of things. I subscribe to a more understanding view of such acts. Suicide itself (*in my opinion) is the logical progression of an unbalanced equation. In laymen terms once the pain of living becomes greater than the joy of being alive...once it appears that there is nothing but more pain and heartache over the horizon. Once someone feels that all hope is truly lost, suicide becomes a real and in some cases alluring option. I pity these kids, these vessels of potential, shattered long before their time. And why? Three kids are dead. Mothers and fathers have lost their sons. Grandparents will bury their grandchildren. And the question echoes through my head again and again. Why? Why didn't anyone stop it? Why didn't anyone say anything? Why are such social issues brought to light only after three young boys have taken their own lives?

The bullies will receive no reprimand in this case. Police have assured the parents of the deceased that the children broke no laws in the torment of their children. Teasing and bullying are not criminal acts. And perhaps it is best not to scar the instigators further. Deaths like these have a way of affecting an entire community and I have faith that the children involved have seen the results of such behavior first-hand in a way that none of us can fully comprehend. Their lives will be difficult, guilt is not easy to work through. But neither is grief.

We have grown accustomed, as a nation, to letting horrors such as this just slide of our back. To shrug at one another and say "the world's a fucked up place" and move on as if the memory of such things were as easy to shed as an unwanted piece of clothing. But I find myself thinking about Seth Walsh all the potential he had. All the lives he would have moved through, all the people who would have had their lives altered for knowing him. And I can't help but feel a profound sense of loss.