No One Knows

​This is probably going to get some negative comments, so let me start here:

I do not know all the details of the Lindsay Clancy story, and I do not want this thread to become a debate about whether particular decisions were right or wrong.

None of us were there.

And I’m guessing almost no one reading this has ever killed their own child, which pretty much eliminates us as experts on what happens inside the mind of someone who does.

I have shared pieces of this story before. Technically, it isn’t entirely my story, but there is no one living today who would be harmed by my telling it.

When I was 10 days old, I died. My parents had separated after only two years of marriage, and my mother and I were staying with her father. His girlfriend was visiting that day. The story I was always told was that she walked past my crib and saw a pillow covering my face. She pulled it off and began CPR. An ambulance came. I was pronounced dead. Thankfully, somebody didn’t give up. And 68 years later, here I am telling the story.

How did a pillow end up over the face of a 10-day-old baby? I don’t know. I tried to ask over the years. I never got an answer.

A friend of my father’s later told me that during that same period she had changed my diaper and discovered bruises covering my little body and legs.

My medical records also show that I was treated after my arm had been pulled out of the shoulder socket.

Eventually my paternal grandparents intervened. They convinced my very young parents that it would be better for everyone if they adopted me. My parents agreed. They both eventually remarried and went on with their lives.

My mother had another baby the following year. That baby was found dead in the crib at around 10 days old. She had another baby the next year. That baby was also found dead in the crib at around the same age. There is no one left who can tell me exactly what happened. And I refuse to pretend that I know.

I developed a relationship with my mother when I was in high school. There were good times and difficult ones. Sometimes she tried too hard to be my mother when, emotionally, I already had one. I don’t even know exactly how to describe what I felt for her. I want to say I loved her, but I’m not sure “love” completely describes it.

She later had another child—my brother—and when I was a teenager, he became my favorite little plaything. I spoiled him rotten. I have wonderful memories of him, and today we have an adult relationship in which both of us have made peace with pieces of our past.

But when I became pregnant with my first child, I was terrified. What people then called the “baby blues” frightened me because I wondered whether whatever had happened generations before could somehow be inside me too. What if I had my baby and wanted to hurt her? That fear never became reality. Not once. But I remember being afraid that it could.

Years later I asked my mother one question. I had always suffered intense panic when something covered my face. I asked her if she had any idea why. She became completely silent. For several minutes she said nothing. I never asked again.

In 2014, after several major heart attacks, she could no longer live alone. She was in Florida and asked my husband and me if she could come live with us in Arizona. My daughter and I drove her across the country. She lived with us for 99 days.

Her last day was a good one—or as good as a day can be in an ICU surrounded by machines. For about 30 minutes she was completely alert and present. Then she died peacefully and quickly. I did not cry. I still haven’t.

People who knew our history sometimes asked me how I could possibly bring her into my home and care for her after everything I suspected may have happened. My answer has always been very simple: I don’t have to answer for her actions. I have to answer for mine.

Should the deaths of those babies have been investigated more closely? Probably. Today, I think there would be many more questions. But this happened in the 1950s, when “crib deaths” happened and the idea that a mother might deliberately harm her own baby was something many people simply could not comprehend. I will never know the truth.

What I do know is that my mother never seemed completely free. Even in happy moments, there always seemed to be something underneath. Something heavy. Something she carried. And no, I don’t believe she was evil.

I cannot diagnose her. I cannot tell you what happened in those rooms all those years ago. I cannot excuse something when I don’t even know exactly what occurred.

But I can believe two things at the same time: Terrible acts can have terrible consequences. And human beings can be terribly broken, frightened, ill or tormented and desperately need help.

Mental illness destroys lives every single day—the lives of the people suffering and sometimes the lives of everyone around them. Compassion does not require pretending harm didn’t happen. Accountability does not require abandoning compassion.

Maybe that’s why stories like Lindsay Clancy’s affect me differently than they might affect someone else. Because somewhere inside that story, I hear echoes of questions I have carried for 68 years. Questions I will never have answered. And after all these years, I have made peace with that too.