Below is a piece written by a guest about motherhood and the differences it can take in women embodied or not with love for her child. As a warning (and another below marked by the red asterisk) this is not a light-hearted commentary. Please feel free to comment, discuss, and share your thoughts. *The second part of this story concerns a young girl who was sexually assaulted, abused and then murdered.
Two Mothers
A woman, who just happened to be an actor and singer on a television show called Glee, swims with her 4 year old son in Lake Piru, about an hour north of Santa Clarita, California. It’s a beautiful Wednesday afternoon. The water is warm. The lake virtually empty. Her name is Naya and Naya decides to take a break from her busy world to spend some time with her son. She rents a boat for the day and takes her son swimming in the warm California water. Then something goes very wrong. Naya swims to her small son, hurriedly boosts him onto the deck of the boat, then slips under the water and does not return. Several hours later, her son is found asleep on the boat; hours after that Naya’s body is recovered. The coroner finds no injuries or evidence of a crime and reports her death as an accidental drowning. We can only speculate as to what happened that day. Severe muscle cramps can render swimmers helpless, cold water spots can cause undercurrents and a phenomenon similar to rip-tides. The residents of the area know about these things and have reportedly complained for years about the lack of signage or life-guard patrols. Did Naya get caught by something like this? Did her unanchored boat simply drift too far away, and in her effort to catch it, had she exhausted herself? One of the few things we do know is that her four your old son is quoted to have said that his mom “boosted” him onto the deck of the boat, then went under the water. His lack of alarm or awareness of her distress makes sense. We know that drowning people are often unable to vocalize as they struggle to stay afloat. Lifeguards are trained to look for the “body language” of a drowning person, not merely to wait for cries of help. Her son did not know about her distress or the danger they were in, nothing she did signaled alarm, at least as far as a four-year-old might discern. All of this points to some kind of rapidly changing circumstance. Naya knew she was in trouble and that they both needed to get out of the water. Could she have saved herself and then retrieved her son? Perhaps she lacked the energy to climb onto the boat and that an attempt to do so would only waste her dwindling strength. Had she been fighting an undertow? I can only imagine what it must have been like to move between moments like that. To be swimming, smiling, splashing with your son. Then to pause while you wonder if something troublesome has you in its grips, then the realization that mortal danger is upon you, and then the struggle for life. She becomes exhausted, short of breath, unable to cry out or even speak. Her body is no longer working properly; the lack of oxygenated blood makes it uncooperative.
In all of this, one thought occupies her mind. Her child. He isn’t big enough to reach the deck of the boat by himself. If she dies while he’s in the water, he will be alone. Even if equipped with a flotation device, his low profile will make him easy to miss by other boaters. She dreads that he might be left alone, that he might eventually die in the water without her. So with all her remaining strength, she grabs her child, propels him to the edge of the boat and with one final violent effort, she kicks her feet and pushes her child onto the deck. She is spent. So completely exhausted that she no longer feels the tingle of oxygen deprived muscles. Even the water now entering her lungs goes unprotested. But one bit of satisfaction fills her dimming consciousness. In those final moments between life and death, she doesn’t think about her talent, her career, nor the admiration of a million fans, not even her own life. Her child is safe.
He is alive because she made a choice. Not a choice made after careful consideration, listing the pros and cons. She made a choice in the midst of horrifying circumstance and every temptation to panic. It is at these moments that our most basic and primal instincts are revealed, the instinct that says, “above all else, preserve thyself.” It is this primal fear that makes otherwise stalwart men run from calamity. It is this fear that makes us cowards. But the only thought in Naya’s mind was the life of her son. Despite all her distress, she fixated on one single goal, to save him. That is now his legacy and forever a part of his story, a frozen moment. His mother traded her life for his. Very few of us will ever be tested this way and fewer still will choose someone else’s life. But Naya was a good mom, the mom we hope we all would be.
. . .
On July 9th 2016, Sara Packer ended years of physical and mental abuse inflicted upon her daughter, Grace.
Sara and her boyfriend, a man by the name of Jake Sullivan, teamed up to drug, torture, and rape 14 year old Grace in order to fulfill Sullivan’s, “sex-slave,” fantasy. During one session of abuse, Sara told her daughter, “this is your life now,” and when Sullivan had finished his session, Grace would be left alone in a hot dark attic, on an otherwise beautiful summer day, to ponder that new life. These sessions, these violent horrors, occurred off and on for about 12 hours that day, finally ending with Grace’s death by strangulation at the hands of Sullivan. When the deed was done, Grace was dismembered and her body parts were placed in boxes of kitty litter. Sara then reported her daughter, “missing.” After storing the body parts in the attic for a while, the couple decided to deposit her remains in a forest seventy-five miles from their home. Grace was later discovered by hunters. Sara and Sullivan kept quiet but as media attention intensified and interviews with police persisted, they both decided to end their lives together. Their dual suicide failed and while in the hospital, Sullivan confessed. During the subsequent police interviews and trial, more information emerged. We find out for example that Sara felt “betrayed” by Sullivan for confessing.
Heartbreaking and grisly details are plentiful in this story, but there is one detail that stands out among all the others…at least for me. After a session of rape and beatings, when Grace was alone once more in that attic, she broke free of her bonds and very nearly escaped. Sullivan and Sara returned just in time to stop her, and a struggle ensued. Sullivan wrapped his arm around Grace’s neck and began to choke the life out of her. Unable to speak, unable to breath, Grace looked at her mother. In a silent courtroom Sara told us what happened next. She took her daughter’s hand, looked into her eyes and whispered, “Just go honey.” It was then that Grace looked away, closed her eyes, and gave up her struggle.
When I first read about this story, I became numb as I thought about those last moments for Grace. Grace had endured a lifetime of abuse. She had endured multiple sessions of rape and torture. But there is something about the human spirit that seeks life even in the midst of dire circumstance. Our minds, against all reason, believe that whatever is happening, we may yet escape, we may yet live. We believe irrationally that there is some line that our abuser might not cross. We hope at some point this mother, hardly worthy of the title, just might come to her senses and stop the abuse. That was the look Grace must have projected, one final plea as if to simultaneously assert and ask the question, “This is the line, the line has been found… hasn’t it?” And her mother’s answer came in a whisper, “Just go, honey.” A term of endearment mingled with murder. It was surely then that Grace knew she was completely alone in a vast and empty ocean. Abandoned by the only person in the world that could have saved her and should have loved her, even when all others might fail. The last person in the world charged with her protection is now giving her permission, as it were, to simply die. That is Grace’s frozen moment. She died believing that no one loved her, that no one wanted her; that her life meant nothing to the one person for whom it should have meant the most. But Sara was a bad mom, the kind of mom we wish did not exist, but they do.
. . .
I sometimes imagine that I am an alien studying the Earth and its human inhabitants from a great distance. Just when I think I understand a mother’s love for her child, I am shaken, as if startled from sleep by some horrifying aberration. How can both of these stories be true? How is it that humans can occupy such divergent spaces at the same time. And of all human philosophies, which one can possibly bridge so great a divide between the evil and the sublime?
Written by J
