Saturday, July 21, 2012

Mothers and the law

Recently, I spent a beautiful Saturday bailing out an acquaintance who was charged. Since I choose not to spend my time in filthy jail cells interviewing society's unfortunate I was not there as his lawyer but as a supporter and potential surety.  The court house was abuzz with a close community of cops, crowns, counsel ( private bar and legal aid) and they all spoke a unique language peppered with words like "remand", "conditions", "first apperance" etc.  It took me a while to figure out the orchestrated fashion in which everything ran, albeit too slowly. While I got lulled into boredom by the tediousness of the process, I was struck by the number of mothers who were there, having perhaps spent a sleepless night following that initial phone call with tidings of the arrest.  What if they had heard their child had shot and killed several people as in the case of the Colarado shooter? The cold and ponderous machinery of the State which had entered their living room in that moment was now here to stay for a while.  They had brought into this world someone  who had taken other lives.  Had they actually missed the writing on the wall ?  Were they blindsided?  Or both?  Or were their kids those true "originals" who have an alternate perception of reality and are just incapable of compliance.  On that day in bail court, the predominant emotions expressed by the moms were disbelief, shame, self blame and guilt.  In several of those cases the blunt instrument of the law had been invoked for relatively "minor offences" bringing the  mother child relationship to a point of no return heralding a wake up or a break up call.  Trust had to be earned again and the terms of engagement between mother and child renegotiated.  Not in the case of this Colardao shooter who is clearly mentally ill.  I sent up a prayer of gratitude for not having to deal with this and for the collective group of parents and  kids who were present that day, to resolve, restore and heal without greater harm to themselves and others.  Parents must take over where the legal system stops.  What role do the state and guns have, you might ask? That's a topic for another blog!

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