The Death of Children

I was reviewing my posts, and I realized I never wrote about my experience of the death of a child. Here goes.

Patty Walling was a crazy person...or at least that was what all of we bratty elementary kids said. I remember the rumors that went around about her mental state. She was a single mother with two small children. The older one, Rikki, was one of the cutest kids I have ever seen. He was inordinately small, most likely from malnourishment, and wore ratty secondhand clothing. I could see his inner yearning to be normal in his big, brown, eyes. In the household he grew up in, however, normality was near impossible. Rikki's sister Charice, younger by two years, was no different. She was the epitome of cute. She had blue eyes and white-blond hair, but, like Rikki, was extremely small and far from normal. The main problem these children faced was their mom's overprotective nature. Even though they lived about two blocks away from the elementary, she would bring Rikki to school and pick him up directly after, never talking to anyone. Rikki and Charice were not seen outside of their house unless accompanied by their mother.We all knew Patty was weird, but we could have never foreseen the tragedy that was to come.

It was my first day of sixth grade. I lived 30 miles out of town, so I had to ride the bus every day. I remember when we pulled into town and passed the post office. I saw Patty's old suburban sitting out front with Charice and Rikki looking out the back window. I waved at them, thinking of how excited Charice must have been, as it was her first day of kindergarten. Rikki was just starting first grade. He had been unable to get through kindergarten on the first attempt and had to repeat it so he was almost just as excited as his sister, considering he had accomplished such a feat. The beginning of school would have been a huge relief to the two of them, considering they were never able to interact with other children otherwise. The strange thing was, neither of the children were smiling. I thought nothing of it and forgot about the sighting until later that day.

My friend Randi and I made a point to play with Rikki at recess because his classmates thought he was weird and would oftentimes make fun of him. We waited but he never came and we realized he was not at school at all. I couldn't possibly guess what had happened, so I thought nothing of this occurrence either. I just assumed the children must have been sick. The rest of the day went as planned; kids getting settled into new classrooms and becoming acquainted with new teachers. The bus ride home was fun, talking with friends I hadn't gotten a chance to see much over the summer. When I got to the bus stop and jumped into my mom's car (the bus stop was 6 miles away from our house), I could sense something wrong. Her face was tight and her jaw was clenched. I thought I was in trouble, and immediately started wracking my brain for any punishable acts I had committed in the past week. We drove along in silence for a while, and Mom stopped the car and started crying.

"Patty Walling killed her kids." That was the phrase that brought my Easter-bunny world crashing down. Parents are supposed to protect their children, not cause them harm. She had driven them out of town to her parents' ranch and, in one of the abandoned buildings on the property, shot Rikki and Charice and then shot herself. After breaking the news to us, through her tears, Mom told my sister and I that she would never hurt us and would always protect us for our entire lives. The fact that my mom felt like she had to reassure us makes me resent Patty Walling even more for what she did.

We picked up the mail on the way home and realized what Patty had been doing at the post office that morning. She had sent my mom an unexplainable check for five-hundred dollars, around which there was strange and barely-decipherable writing. The only words I made out were "kneel", "God", and "judge". I will never know what she was trying to tell us, but it obviously wasn't a cry for help, considering she killed her kids long before the mail was delivered. The woman who delivered mail to the Walling ranch was actually the one who found the bodies.

Why did Patty Walling do this? She was obviously mentally unstable, but did she justify her actions to herself in her sick, twisted, mind? Maybe she thought she was protecting Rikki and Charice from something. She had led a tumultuous life, to say the least, in and out of abusive relationships and dealing with family issues. Maybe she didn't want her children to experience what she had experienced and wanted to send them to Heaven as soon as possible. If she believed in God, she must have known she would go to Hell for what she had done, so maybe it is possible that she was willing to undergo eternal damnation to give her children eternal bliss. Did she view her crime as not the ultimate betrayal of mother to child but the ultimate sacrifice? Maybe Patty Walling wasn't a horrible person. Maybe in her mind she did the most generous thing possible.

I say these things in her defense, but I have a hard time not hating her for what she did. She shot those kids one at a time. Which one had to watch the other die? How soon did they figure out what she was going to do to them? Were they thinking she was taking them to school until she didn't turn into the parking lot? What did she say to them before she did it? God only knows and He is the only one who can punish her for what she has done.