- Share This Post
- submit
- 12
-
Sparkle (0)
BlogHer contributing Editor Erin Kotecki Vest posted this weekend about her brand-new niece, and the joy of being able to share her birth with the world - most of all the baby's dad, Erin's brother, in Iraq.
By bedtime, I was congratulating Dad the soldier via webcam and getting a tour of his room in the Middle East.
I had spoken to people all over the globe over one tiny little girl.
I wasn’t doing business. I wasn’t blogginig. I wasn’t connecting with old friends or reading techie news. I was simply celebrating life.
This is the best of family, of connections, of parenting and being a sibling. As Erin puts it, "It's not Web 2.0. It's life."
Today, a reader of Erin's blog asked that we remember a family that did not have a happy ending, and for whom any initial joy was unsustainable. Gail Pumphrey and her three children were killed by Gail's ex-husband and the childrens' father on Thanksgiving day. Pumphrey brought the kids -Meghan, David and Brandon - to a park to drop them off with their dad for the rest of the holiday. He chose, inexplicably, to kill them all and himself, in the county right next to mine. Gail had moved about a half hour away, in her efforts to separate herself from her ex-husband.
It is ridiculous that this is a familiar story - an angry divorce, an ongoing custody and visitation battle, financial struggles and relocations - that ended with a murder-suicide. The local news site listed five more incidents of domestic murder involving spouses and children in our area just this year alongside this family's story.
But just as this story is like many others in its sad details, it is still this family's alone, and it is still unacceptable. Specific, irreplaceable lives ended, and many others remaining feel unique grief.
Full disclosure: this is a topic that I typically don't address, and as a counselor have not chosen to focus on in my work. I've learned that we are all equipped to support certain populations without becoming emotionally devastated ourselves, and this is one I knew I couldn't manage on a daily basis. I have great admiration for the social workers, victim advocates and shelter staff who can. And I feel especially compelled by the gravity of this story and the pressures of this particular season, to give voice to others today who are writing about it more eloquently and more personally than I can.
Cole, Erin's reader, is devastated by the violent loss of her friends, Gail and her children, and is disturbed by the coverage. She wants them to be remembered well.
My friend was Gail Pumphrey and her children were David, Megan and Brandon. She was a wonderful mother who was trying to follow the law to get away from an abusive asshole.
In these last few days there have been invasive, inaccurate and mean articles written about them in the Washington Times and Post and I have found a few "pro-men" blogs talking about how men always get the short stick in divorce and this is what happens when you push a man too far.
I am sick with disbelief that anyone could rationalize what this monster did...kill one child after another with a rifle after killing their mother in front of them.
Please, blog world that I am familiar with, please write something about domestic violence. Post links on your site. Don't make it sensationalistic. My friends deserve so much more than that. It is heartbreaking for their family to hear of slanderous stories only out there to sell papers and have done nothing to bring awareness to the issue of domestic violence and the brutality it is.
The Individual Voice is a friend of Cole's and a therapist who says:
Angry exes with guns. They scare the shit out of me as a therapist. They are the main reason I quit private practice, not wanting to be vulnerable to the violent men who fathered children I treated in an office without security personnel.
She too encourages remembrance and writing to keep awareness going.
It's almost Hannukah. I'm going to light four candles early for Gail and her three children. Don't let Gail be forgotten.
Post four candles in memory of Gail's family and against domestic violence. Come up with your own creative posts on Domestic Violence too.
Debbi at Look Into My Head suggests giving to domestic violence support organizations this season.
In a nation that often seems to adopt "every man
