I am appalled by this story on
CNN. If I were the mom's husband, the LEAST I would have done to her was: spank her all night long with a bamboo stick and ditch her the very next morning :P ...( i know sh*t happens in life..but this is ARRGGHH ...i don't know what to say)
To all parents (especially moms) out there (in case you missed) :
An overwhelmed mom's deadly mistake
(OPRAH.com)
-- For any mom who's ever felt frazzled, overwhelmed or rushed, Oprah
says this show is for you. "It's your wake-up call to slow down," she
says. "What happened to my guest today could so easily happen to any of
you."
Brenda Slaby still blames herself for her daughter's death. She tells moms to slow down and appreciate their kids.
Brenda Slaby says she was once an assistant principal and mother of two who tried her best to be "supermom."
"It was very hard trying to be the perfect mom and the perfect
employee," she says. "I try to be everything to everybody... I've
always been the kind of person that lived for doing things for other
people."
Then, on a hot August afternoon in 2007, she says she
went from being a good role model for children, a good administrator
and a good parent to being the most hated mom in America.
When
Brenda woke up on August 23, 2007, she says she knew she had a busy day
ahead of her. Summer vacation was coming to a close, and it was the
first day back for teachers at her school. That morning, the rush to
get out the door was more frantic than usual, she says.
Brenda
and her husband, Gary, got their two young daughters, Allison and
Cecilia, dressed and ready to go. Then, in a departure from their
regular routine, Brenda loaded 2-year-old Cecilia into her car to take
her to the babysitter's house.
"I had a dentist appointment, and
I asked Brenda to take Cecilia," Gary says. "I normally took both
Cecilia and Allison, dropped Cecilia off at the sitter and Allison off
at preschool."
With Cecilia sleeping in the backseat, Brenda pulled out of the
driveway at about 6 a.m. When she realized it was too early to drop her
youngest child off, she decided to run a quick errand. Brenda stopped
at the store to buy doughnuts, a treat for the returning teachers.
After loading her car with snacks, she got on the road that led to her
school and drove straight there. With her mind racing through all the
things she needed to accomplish before teachers arrived, Brenda got
right to work. "I had lots of things to set up," she says. "I was
nervous and frantic that morning because it was such an important day
to get the school year [off] to a great start."
The day began
with a staff meeting, followed by lunch. While chatting with new
teachers between meetings, Brenda says she talked about her daughters.
"My feeling was it was a great first start," she says. "It was going to
be a great school year, and it was a great start to the day."
At
about 4 p.m., Brenda was in her office, getting ready to head home when
all hell broke loose. "A good teacher friend of mine -- sometimes I
think it was a blessing it was her -- was on her way home, and she
walked by my car," Brenda says. "She ran into my office and she said,
'Brenda, your baby's in the car.'"
Brenda immediately grabbed
her keys and raced to the parking lot. "I knew what I was going to
find," she says. "I opened my car door, and I remember hearing the
voices around me. Teachers who were close to me [were] screaming."
When she got to her car she found Cecilia in the backseat, still
strapped into her car seat. Brenda says she grabbed her daughter out of
the car as fast as she could, but she knew it was too late.
"I
knew she was gone as soon as I picked her up, I knew," she says. "I
remember I took her, and I ran through the parking lot with her,
screaming her name. Then, what brought me kind of to consciousness, I
guess, was somebody from the cafeteria yelled for me to bring her here."
Brenda says she handed her lifeless daughter to someone who tried to
revive her. Then, she retreated to another part of the cafeteria and
began to pray. "I heard people yelling for ice, and I sat in a ball and
I prayed," she says. "I prayed harder than I've ever prayed in my
life... But I knew she was gone."
Cecilia died of a heatstroke after being left in the car for nearly eight hours. Outside, temperatures had reached 100 degrees.
Gary was working when he received a frantic call from Brenda's
principal. "He said, 'Get over to the school right now,'" Gary says.
"And I said, 'What's up?' [He said,] 'It's an emergency.'"
In
the car on the way to his wife's school, Gary says he never considered
that his child's life might be in danger. "The whole time I'm thinking,
'What disgruntled employee did something crazy?'" he says. "I said,
'Well, maybe something happened to Brenda.'"
When Gary pulled
into the school parking lot, he says he saw a lot of commotion.
Brenda's principal pulled him off to the side to tell him what
happened. "He looked at me and he says, 'Cecilia's dead,'" Gary says.
"I didn't even think to ask him, 'How? Why?' I just got up and sort of
walked off to be by myself. I was just in shock. I didn't know what to
do."
Despite his grief, Gary says he has never blamed his wife
for Cecilia's death. "I could have done the same thing very easily," he
says. On nights when his wife had to work late, Gary says she'd ask him
to pick up the girls from the babysitter's house, a break from their
normal routine. A few times, he says he forgot. Oprah.com: How to heal your grief
"I get out of work thinking about what I'm going to do when I get home,
this and that. I'm going up the highway, [I realize,] 'Oh, my gosh. I
left her at the sitter's,'" he says. "I would have to turn around, go
back and get her."
Gary doesn't hold Brenda responsible, but
Brenda still blames herself. "I realized the most important person in
the world to me lost out because I didn't plan well enough," she says.
"She's the one that slipped through the cracks."
The day Cecilia
died, Brenda was taken to a police station where she was questioned for
more than two hours. During her emotional confession, she says police
officers were empathetic. "Never during the questioning did they seem
accusatory," Brenda says. One officer assured Brenda that no one
thought she meant to hurt Cecilia.
Brenda, on the other hand,
was not easy on herself. "Good mothers don't do this," she said during
the questioning. "How could I not think of my daughter? I want to die.
I just want to die."
Brenda admits she had left Cecilia in a
running car before, but she says she never made a habit of it. "The day
that Cecilia died was so different because I completely forgot that she
was there," she says.
While the police may have been empathetic,
Brenda says her community was not. "My community was in outrage," she
says. "I was the most hated mom."
Although Brenda says her staff
and principal were wonderful to her, she says the decision makers in
the school district decided they wanted nothing to do with her. Oprah.com: How to slow down
Although coping has been difficult, Brenda says she has found a higher
purpose that is helping her move forward. "Almost immediately, I said,
'How am I going to make something out of this?' I have been given this
to bear for a reason, and I'm not going to let Cecilia's life be in
vain. That I'm going to use what I've learned in this whole process to
change lives for other people."
Brenda says the lesson she
learned that she wants to pass on to other moms is to slow down --
don't become overwhelmed with perfection. "I've learned to say a lot,
'It just doesn't matter,'" she says. "The house doesn't matter, the
perfect dinner doesn't matter -- the kids matter."
From "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "A Overwhelmed Mom's Deadly Mistake" © 2008
