Opinions please.
Father First, Senator Second
For Rick Santorum, Politics Could Hardly Get More Personal
By Mark Leibovich
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 18, 2005; Page C01
In his Senate office, on a shelf next to an autographed baseball, Sen. Rick Santorum keeps a framed photo of his son Gabriel Michael, the fourth of his seven children. Named for two archangels, Gabriel Michael was born prematurely, at 20 weeks, on Oct. 11, 1996, and lived two hours outside the womb.
Upon their son's death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted not to bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen's parents' home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1 1/2. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass.
He and Karen brought Gabriel's body home so their children could "absorb and understand that they had a brother," Santorum says. "We wanted them to see that he was real," not an abstraction, he says. Not a "fetus," either, as Rick and Karen were appalled to see him described -- "a 20-week-old fetus" --on a hospital form. They changed the form to read "20-week-old baby."
The full story...
http://spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53991
Last edited by AFE7FATMAN; 11-17-2006 at 03:41 AM.
I dont know anything about this guy, so I have no "political bias" like some may have. I dont see anything wrong with what he did. I wouldnt do it, but everyone grieves in their own way. I cant image losing a child.
I know a family that lost a very premature baby. They also dressed him and held him and cried and took pictures. People have their own way of dealing with loss.
It is obviously a very tramatic moment and I think people can't think too clearly at that time. I personally wouldn't have shown the baby to the kids but I can understand the strange reasoning in doing so.
That's so weird, we were just discussing that in my law class when talking about abortion. IMO, it's very weird for them to do that...although I mean it is their baby and it must have been devasting. I can see where they wanted to spend a little time with it before they buried it. However, it's a little spooky to have taken pictures and then have it hanging on your wall.
Everyone grieves in their own way. If its helpful to them im ok with it.
Its really weird though...
I used to work for a home health/ho e and I overheard a conversation between two of the nurses one day. One of the nurses had been up all night with a family who's 4-year-old son was dying of leukemia. When he died in the early morning, his parents broke out a bottle of scotch or whiskey or something and just got drunk. The one nurse said to the other, "I don't think that's what I would've done... but I've never had to watch my 4-year-old son die..."
I don't think there's anything weird about what they did. He may have only lived a couple hours but he was their son. This was their way of honoring his short life and acknowledging that he was part of their family and would be missed. People grieve in their own way. Before the turn of the century, when it was very common for young children to die from things we think of as normal childhood illnesses, people used to have death portraits made of their children... they would dress the dead child up and take a beautiful picture of him or her. Seems really odd today, but I suppose it was one of the few ways they felt they could preserve their memories.
There's nothing wrong with what he did, and I don't even think the pictures part is wrong either. It's a little weird, but not really. I don't know so much about hanging it on a wall or framing it or anything, but at least having a picture of your dead baby before saying goodbye to it forever is not really weird.
Beyond being weird and strange, this is just plain wrong! If you and your wife want to partake in this creepy then fine, but leave your other living children out of it. What if this screws up the other three children? They just took a traumatic experience for them and turned into a possibly very traumatic and life shaping experience for their other 3 children. I truly believe that the experiences we have when we are very young shape us for the rest of our lives, children's minds are sponges at this age, it's amazing how much influence these early life experiences we have effect us for the rest of our lives.
I disagree that this would be traumatic for the kids. In fact I think it's weird that our modern society has turned death into something we like to pretend doesn't or shouldn't happen to anyone. It's only been very recently that people were carted off to hospitals to die and then to funeral homes to lay in state. People, including a lot of children, used to die in their homes; viewings used to be in the home; people used to buried in family burial plots. It's not like they were dangling a bloody corpse in front of their children. To me it seems like the way they handled it was a very sweet and loving way for everyone to see the baby and say goodbye and come to terms with what had happened. Sad things happen and it's okay for your kids to be sad once in a while. Understanding how to deal with grief is not the same as being traumatized.
Creepy...
Still I've seen stranger things happen... well not seen, more like read about.
hmm... the children were 6, 4 and 1 1/2... do you really believe they understood what had just happened? No, I don't think this was for the benefit of the children, this was to help them cope with their grief, which is perfectly alright. I'm just saying.
I wasn't saying I thought they did it for the benefit of the children, but rather I don't think there was any reason to shelter their children from it. For me, it seems like it would've been weirder if they'd pretended for the sake of their children that nothing had happened.
You really think that the kids were old enough to understand what the was going on? To young to understand death and grief but old enough to be traumatized.
Just because something used to be commonplace makes it OK now? Lots of things used to be acceptable that aren't now, for very good reason, and I'm very thankful for that. And there is nothing wrong with dying in your home instead of the hospital, lord knows that is the way I would like to go, in the comfort of my own home surrounded by my family. But if your loved ones do die in the hospital I wouldn't recommend loading their body up and taking them off to "cuddle and kiss" the body with 3 children that are under the age of 6.
Uhhhhhhh, so just having a funeral like most people is pretending it didn't happen? Maybe they could have just talked to the children about it instead of letting them kiss and cuddle with their corpse of a sibling, not to mention turning it into a Kodak moment.
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