Originally published May 8, 2007, thehive.modbee.com  

I’m sitting at my desk this afternoon, rushing to get caught up before a meeting so I can rush to finish afterward, and a call comes over the police scanner. Vehicle versus train on Claribel Road.

It’s always phrased that way: Vehicle versus train, vehicle versus tree, etc. It’s a coping mechanism.
Within an hour, still in the “vehicle versus train” mode, I was posting the early report on modbee.com.

A woman and four people in her sport utility vehicle had died. We heard rumors children were involved.

Possibly very young children.

And that’s when I made the mistake of climbing into the driver’s seat of that SUV.  Did she know this was it? Did she have time to say good-bye to her babies, to get in one last “I love you”?

People ask how parenthood changes you, and you mention the obvious: Lack of sleep, time and money. The deeper changes are inside. You feel things differently.

The thoughts running through my mind today wouldn’t have occurred to me before I became a mother.

Today, I tettered on losing my grip. I’ve only done that four times in my career. Three were stories involving children.

The first was when I was 23 and assigned to talk to a family waiting by a river for emergency workers to find their sons. A group had gone on a summer picnic a few days earlier, and the boys had fallen in. At that point, it was clear crews were looking for bodies.

The mother sat alone on a rock, about 50 yards from the river and everyone else. I will never forget her look of grief and disbelief. Did she want to talk, I asked. No, she said. I apologized for intruding and retreated.

At that age, I  could only guess what she was going through. Even today, I can’t know what it would be like to lose both my boys in an instant. But I can come closer to imagining it. And I can feel it.

The second time was about a year after that. The son of a county commissioner – the West Virginia equivalent of the Board of Supervisors – had pleaded guilty to murder after killing his mother and seriously wounding his father. My assignment: Talk to a man who had buried his wife and lost his only child to 25 to 48 years in prison.

The interview started with a politico’s bluff and bluster – he hadn’t gotten to where he was by being a softy. By the end, he was crying. I did, too, after I got back to my car. I had no idea what he was going through, but I could see the pain, raw and real. But it didn’t occur to me to imagine the day a mommy and daddy had brought their baby home from the hospital and wonder what had happened in the intervening years to lead to where it did. These days, I wonder often.

The third time was when I was about five months pregnant with Big Guy and editing stories about Megan Mendez, a little girl whose drug-addicted mother turned her over to the couple who tortured the child to death.

I read the Child Protective Services reports and saw pictures of a happy toddler with a caring foster mother who had been eager to adopt her.

I came home one day and went straight to bed. “What’s wrong?” my husband asked. “Do you know what I did all day? I read about a beautiful little girl who was murdered. Do you hear me? I spent the whole day talking about a dead baby.”

The fourth time was when Scott Peterson’s guilty verdict came in. I was two months pregnant with Little Guy and Big Guy was almost 1½.

I didn’t even make it to my bedroom that evening. I walked through the door and wept for two lost lives, for a baby boy who never had a chance.

Not long after that, a young reporter who’d covered a particularly brutal string of crimes asked me if it ever gets easier.

Well, yes and no. Yes, because you learn more coping mechanisms: Vehicle versus train.

But, no, because you’re human. And on a certain level, you don’t want it to get easier. Because that means you’ve lost something.

And if you ever become a parent, it will become exponentially harder. 

Copyright 2007 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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