Beautiful

 

“Forget me not”…please?

 

By Dave Andrusko
Today was a special occasion for us: Emma, our first grandchild, was off to preschool for the very first time.

Lisa and I accompanied Emma and her Mom, Jean, to the church where Jean, our tender-hearted daughter in law, only cried once. Talk about bringing back memories….

The best line of the day? Lisa went into the classroom to help Emma get situated. Emma, who is 3 ¾ going on 6, looked her straight in the eye and announced, “You don’t belong in here Grandma.”
We all laughed and, along with a close friend of Jean’s, went out for coffee and a bagel.
I mention this small rite of passage for two reasons. Every time something especially good happens in my life, particularly to my kids and now grandkids, I remind myself not only how lucky I am but how fortunate they are to have loving kin.

That this is not the case for all children is, of course, no news to people like you and I who spend much of our lives trying to save the lives of babies whose entire existence is—or would be–inconvenient.

As if I needed a reminder, I had not been in the office two hours when I read about a couple that had starved Jordan, their three-month-old infant, to death.  Why?
The defense attorney said the mother had a personality disorder. She asked for leniency, a leniency the mother and Jordan’s father did not extend to the baby whose skin was “just hanging on his bones” when they finally called 911 the day after Christmas. (But not before the parents took time to cook and eat a meal and tidy up the house.).
There was nothing remotely accidentally about Jordan’s death. Already by week two, the couple “was not happy about having a child. Shortly after the baby was born they discovered that their lives would never be the same again, and decided to do something about it.”
“Decided to do something about it.” Ponder that for a moment and try not to cry.
Five hours later, I was browsing one of my favorite pro-life blogs, operated by Chelsea Zimmerman. She clued me and everyone else into one of those ads that just take your breath away.
As it happens it’s not one of the series of life-affirming “Beautiful Woman” videos we’ve written about before– the ones from the Thai branch of the Japanese lingerie company, Wacoal, not necessarily the first place you’d think of as a source of such incredibly powerful stories. If you have not seen them, you must. Go to nrlc.cc/1qBWIRW; nrlc.cc/1njHj8c; and nrlc.cc/1njHwbF.
Rather this video—“Forget me not”—is the product of Thai Life Insurance and can be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qtqmaIag-8.
I will not steal the thrill of watching it with fresh eyes by going into detail.

As the video begins, the old man is tying his wife’s shoes. We realize quickly that she has Alzheimer’s. But through it all—and through every time she asks, “Who are you?”—he is remindful of why he is tenderly taking care of her.
The promise he made when they were married: “To take care of you for the remainder of your days.”

Compare this with the young mother and her equally feckless boyfriend who decide that having a live baby around the house is a drag. So they “decided to do something about it.”
They “wanted their lives back,” we’re told, and got them back in a soul-shrinking act of cruelty, indifference, and lethal narcissism.
By week four, “the doctor had some concerns about nutrition and other issues.”
Christmas was no doubt one of the times where instead of fitting his son in new clothes, the father drugged him “with a sleep aid medication to quiet” the crying baby.

Here’s how the local County Attorney described the couple’s behavior on December 26:

“They discovered that Jordan was not breathing, was cold, and was rigid. They placed him in warm water, but did not do anything for several hours. During that time they cooked a meal and ate. They eventually called Salina Regional Health Center, and were told to immediately call 911. But they still didn’t right away, instead cleaning the house first.”

Placed Jordan in warm water, as if they were defrosting a chicken. Ate a meal themselves, cleaned the house, and then called 911.
Desirah N. Overturf and Nicholas Corbin, we can be confident, made no promise to take care of Jordan for the remainder his days. They made only one promise: to get their lives back from that intruder who was making himself a nuisance.

And where will those recovered lives be spent? Overturf (and likely Corbin later this month) was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
If she does get out in 2039, she will have been in prison exactly 24 years and nine months longer than Jordan lived.

Source: NRLC News