It can happen to anybody, I guess.

I woke up this morning to terrible news.  A friend from El Paso's son has been shot.  She was on shift at the birth center when it happened, and she didn't even find out until the morning.  He is alive, but it's bad.  He's in a coma, his spine was severed, and there's a lot of other damage, too.  He's had two surgeries so far, and I don't know if there will be others, but I can only imagine that there will be.  It's not good.

It's scary to think about that this happened to her family, and by that standard, it really could happen to anybody.  She's a great mom.  By all accounts, she raised her kids right. This isn't the kind of thing that's supposed to happen to her.  It's just not.  We always delude ourselves into thinking that if we raise our kids well enough, bad stuff won't happen to them, and I think that's one of the reasons this really blows my mind.  She did everything right, as much as any human can. Obviously nobody's perfect, but she's a great mom.  Yes, there were a couple times he got into a little bit of trouble that I knew of, but it wasn't anything awful, definitely nothing that would make you say, "That boy is gonna get himself shot someday."

Edited:  Here's a story from El Paso Times.  It was an accidental shooting.

Stuff like this makes me think.  Our influence, in the grand scheme of things, is so limited.  We put so much into raising our kids so well, so that they will be the kinds of people who will add something positive to the world, and we like to assume that they'll have good things happen to them in return.  We birth gently, we breastfeed on demand, we wear our babies, we gently discipline our preschoolers, we avoid corporal punishment, we try to regard our kids as little humans with a full set of rights.  We do all this, and it consumes us for so many years, and then all we can do is turn them out into the world and hope for the best.  That may be the scariest thing to think about.  My friend has two grown kids and three younger kids.  Of her two grown kids, one is in college, and the other is in the hospital fighting for his life because of a stupid accident. It is all so obvious to see, we turn them out into the world, the world does what it will with them, and all we can do is hope for the best.  Our time of being so influential, and being able to keep them from harm is so small.

Anyway, I'm probably going to call the birth center she works at here in a few, and see if there's a fund set up for donations.  When I know something about that, I'll post that information.

UPDATE:  They did another surgery this afternoon, and it went great. They are going to try to let him breathe on his own tomorrow.  This is very good news.

UPDATE AGAIN: He is beginning to wake up!

More update: Better and better every day.  He's now breathing on his own and can eat and drink.  Of course there is a long road of recovery ahead, but this is big progress, and it really bodes well.  For those who are local, and are able to help with meals, there's an account set up for that on Meal Train.  The link is on Mel's FB page.   Still no word on a fund being set up, but some people are working on it.