Oh, so much of a mess in my head. Lots of it revolves around neglect, protecting my heart-daughters, and understanding how to get through all this. As of right now, in deference to the loss that she faced today, I am going to call Mrs. Dirt by something a little kinder. I might change my mind later, but I can’t stand how awful I am with simply calling her that at the moment. So I’m going to call her Rinna for now. Rinna’s seven month old infant died this morning. This is the baby that she never thought was going to live, and wrote about not wanting to bond with, cuddle with, or smile at because she was afraid of getting too attached.
Apparently she woke up this morning/lunch time and he had died in his crib sometime during the night or morning. Given that neither she nor Mr. Rinna check on the children during the night, not to soothe, change or feed, the baby could have been there like that for more than 8 or 10 hours.
As of 4pm, she was at the police station. Why on earth was she at the police station? Sean’s Dad, who was a DHS caseworker and supervisor for almost 20 years said that her being at the police station was highly unusual, as did a friend of mine who is a grief counselor. Rinna told Sean that someone was also at her house, checking it out. We are assuming that she meant DHS; given that her subsidized apartment is part of a DHS initiative meant to deflect family dissolution, and given that she already has a proven abuse charge in her history, we would be very, very surprised if DHS isn’t heavily involved at this point. There is no way any emergency response team went into that house of hers and thought that it was an environment safe for a child. The last time I was there, it was so filthy, covered with garbage, dirty clothes, dirty dishes, and rotten food that I almost gagged. ANB- your hubby is a police officer- can you ask him of it’s normal for mothers of dead infants to be questioned? Does anyone know what happens when a child dies under questionable circumstances? Oh, these are such awful things to ask, to wonder about, to need the answers to.
This is the truly horrible part. My first thought was that he died from neglect. What kind of a person does that make me? That my first thought was he was dead because she neglected him? What happens if that’s true? How do we ever explain it to the girls? I’m finding it hard to be sympathetic at the moment. Rinna smoked a pack a day during all of her pregnancies, ate poorly, drank, took class C prescription medication, and then wondered if she was to blame when the baby was born early, with underdeveloped lungs and bilateral hernias. She lets the babies wander around in filthy diapers and clothes, doesn’t supervise them, and leaves them under the care of the girls while she naps. For crying out loud, she has been unloading the girls onto friends during the weekends, and generally not being responsible for her girls during visitation time.
I sobbed when I found out this afternoon. Not for Rinna, but for my girls. What will this do to them? How will they cope? And I feel that makes me an awful person too, that I wasn’t crying in sympathy or heart-brokeness for a women who lost her child, but for my girls who lost their baby brother and will have to deal with their mother’s inappropriate grief, guilt and depression that will be unloaded onto a seven and nine year old.
Sean pointed out that one of her children died in her care, and until he said that out loud, I didn’t think about what that means in terms of the girls. She had a child die in her care. Will I ever feel that the girls will be safe with her again? No.
