Published: August 29, 2008 10:50 pm         

Who will cry for the life that was wasted?

Why is there a casket holding the body of a 13-year-old boy who took his own life? The city of Logansport, the county of Cass, the state of Indiana and the whole of the United States needs to know the answer to this question. Everyone needs to know, in the face of this useless tragedy, why it happened. We must seek the answer so we can stop young children from committing such a tragic act. Somehow, somewhere, someone failed this young boy.

Have we as parents forgotten how to nurture our young, and give them a feeling of worth. Are our schools failing to instill ambition in their students and the knowledge of what they can accomplish, what their lives can amount to? Are we failing to socialize with and befriend each other?

What is the answer here? Those who loved him will not, for the rest of their lives, be able to reconcile themselves to this loss. How can they? A boy who should have grown to manhood and known the love of a good wife and children has thrown his life away. Neither his parents nor his grandparents will ever be able to hold his young children in their arms and caress them. The loss is suffered by so many, so many.

His classmates and friends crowd the parking lot, hugging each other and crying. They sit on the steps with their heads in their hands. They sob and shed tears of sorrow as they try to comfort each other. They fill the funeral home to bid their last farewell, trying in vain to grasp what has happened to their world. We ask ourselves the question, over and over. Why? Who could have said that one word to him that would have given his life meaning. Surely, this is society’s burden. The worth of life must be taught to our young. We must fill them with the love of achievement and the determination to accomplish something, to make their lives count. This should never happen.

I thought of my own children as I looked down on his young face. What would I have done if one of mine had taken his own life?

In the casket and around him were the things he cherished and enjoyed as a part of his life. It occurred to me that a boy of 13 should have been trying to figure out what friends he wanted to spend time with and what they might do for fun instead of contemplating suicide. God help us all when we can’t do better than this for our young.

I thought of my own youth. God knows we were poor, but my angel of a mother took care of us, fed us and loved us. I knew in my heart that no matter what happened to me, my Mom could fix it. How could I ever go out into life and fail, or ever consider taking my own life, and hurt my mom or my dad.

The values that once guided us must be brought back. Parents and their children must be families again. They must have goals to pursue together, and they must be able to depend on each other. We must forever be spared the pain of looking down into a casket and seeing one of our young ones lying there who could find no good reason to go on living. Surely, even as our tears fall, Our Lord in Heaven is crying with us. His words ring ever true. “Suffer the young children to come to me.”

Joe Bowyer is a columnist for the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached through the newspaper at ptnews@pharostribune.com