Remembering the Dead

Perspective

Rick Santorum, contender for becoming the Republican Presidential candidate, was smeared last week as being weird, if not a little unhinged.  The proof: in the nineties, the Santorum's suffered under the tragedy of a still-born child.  Santorum took the dead child home for a couple of hours so that the other children could grieve appropriately and say farewell.  Weird, apparently. 

Here is an excellent post from Patterico, putting things in perspective.  Framing the narrative is everything.

Yesterday’s post about Rick Santorum’s child that died had a comment from reader Leviticus that I think deserves to be read by everyone:

Santorum’s wife gave birth to a child. When she did (and, to my mind, even before she did), Santorum’s other children had a baby brother.
When that baby died, the other children lost their baby brother. What were the Santorums to do? Pretend that the other children never had a baby brother? No. The kids might not have understood at the time, but they would eventually; and, young as they were, they had a stake in the matter, a right to know.
The alternative – the only really acceptable alternative – was to tell them that a child had lived and breathed as their brother, to memorialize him. But it would be difficult to communicate that message to young child with mere words. So, they brought his body home; the words became unnecessary.
Those children will always remember their brother; and thoughts of the mystery, sanctity, tragedy, and brevity of human life will be indelibly stamped on their consciousness – a trait sorely lacking in many modern men and women. What bothers the most calloused members of the pro-choice crowd is the intuitive (though ever unacknowledged) realization that some people really do feel love for a child that they don’t know, for the “simple” reason that it was their own, however briefly – that some people really do respect and realize how sacred that bond is, and that they… don’t.

Well said.

Indeed.