The internet is a wonderful thing. I use it many times a day. It's a great place to find information, to solicit opinions, and to gaze for way too long at videos of border collies forming sentences but herding sheep who've had letters painted on them ...
That may just be me
The internet is instant. You see something, you post a response and blam there it is. What one has to bear in mind, of course, is that what you've just seen/heard is also instant, the person who posted it may have done so as an immediate reaction to something, without full consideration of the facts.
This brings me to the case of Jacinta Saladanha. This is the nurse who fell for a prank phone call from some DJ's about the health status of the Dutchess of Cambridge. That story surfaced very quickly and people jumped on it just as quickly
Oh how cruel people howled, how awful are these DJs to case this woman to take her life. They are evil, putting this poor woman in such a position ...
Um, hit the pause, drink some camomile tea to swallow down your outrage and think about this. My first response to this story, knowing only that headline was: What the fuck ... she killed herself over a prank phone call.
Then I learned that all she did was transfer a call to another nurse who then disclosed the information. As far as I know that nurse, who violated a confidence is alive and kicking.
Oh and yeh, Mrs Saldanha was married with children, now left behind.
Now more news has emerged: She left notes behind, including detailed funeral arrangements and a letter critical of the hospital and its staff.
So, cruel evil hospital putting this woman in a position to ..
To what? Not be able to gain a grip? Yup that right there is the cruel part of this post. And why the lightspeed nature of the internet can cause us all to lose a grip
People responded to this story, I'm not sure how much they actually thought about it. Why did this woman take her life. Was it actually due to strictly to this one event? Not likely. I'm making assumptions here but surely there were other things going on in this woman's life, this happened so quickly, one wonders if this event was a trigger pulled on a chamber full of misery.
The initial outrage around this story, which centered on the phone prank, was in my opinion very misplaced. These happens all the time. They also happened to the other nurse, the one who actually betrayed a confidence and she seems fine.
The outrage here should be more about the person who took her life and who has now left a wound in the life of those who loved her, a wound that will never properly heal. It is tragic when someone kills themselves but once that act has been commited, the tragedy shifts to the ones they've left behind
When I was in high school there was a guy whose initials were D.K., his last name was very similar to mine. In our "home room" classes in high school they sat us in alphabetical order so I was often seated right behind him. Yeh, we talked.
D was a good guy, easy going, even temprered, good humored; a decent student but not driven by ambition. He didn't care if he was the quarterback or the valedictorian, he had dreams of course but he was not consumed by him. He had a younger brother, G; he was the true golden boy. Top athlete, top student, chick magnet, he was blond and I really did think I saw a light coming off of him ... OK those were my drug experimentation days but still
One day D came home from school and found his younger brother hanging in the garage. G had killed himself. It came out of nowhere. It was totally unexpected. And it changed D's life forever. I have not seen him in a long time but I recall years ago, on a visit to my home town, I flagged down a cab and the driver was D. We chatted an bit and it was clear that, some 15 years after high school, D had not really moved on. G had taken his own life but he had essentially stopped D's life
So it's tragic that Jacintha Salandha took her own life. But the tragedy how it will affect her husband, her children. We are focussed on why she did it; we really don't know. I strongly suspect more information will come out but I honestly don't know if D or his family ever really found out why G killed himself.
Suicide is the ultimate selfish act. You are in pain, you are shattered, you've gone down a path that leads to darkness and you've forgotten the way back. You are in pain and you just need that pain to end. You are in a place where you feel only your pain, see only your darkness, you have ceased to see the ones around you; the ones who love you, who need you, who will be shattered when you're gone
Did a prank phone call cause this woman to kill herself? Her family may be asking that question now. But as time goes on that will diminish, what will be left behind is the void, there will be guild "Why didn't we see this coming, why didn't we know she was in so much pain" These are questions that will alter a life, and perhaps ruin it
That is the real tragedy here. Lives have been ruined, may continue to be ruined. Was that from a phone call, or from a selfish decision.
A prank can hurt people's feeling, it can be cruel. But leaving your loved ones to live on with nothing but doubt and sadness and guilt ... that is cruelty on another level,
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