Finally, Released

Good to know that finally, Robert Latimer will be released from prison. He has lived far too long in purgatory. First the hellish anguish of witnessing a beloved child of his own languish in pain, year after year, operation after operation.

Carefully tending to her physical needs. Not knowing what the needs of her mind were, yet aware that there was scant little of a mind there. Yet most surely, in the most primal way, aware.

A child born with cerebral palsy of the most severe variety; no mobility, suffering countless epileptic seizures throughout the course of a day. The consciousness of a newborn, yet capable of emoting, leaving a parent with the hope that there might conceivably be some level of awareness deep within.

Knowing, over the course of a dozen years finally, there was little indeed. Capable, though, of reacting to pain, and of that there was ample. Her father finally determined his child had no life. No prospects. No future. The present only rife with the promise of more operations, more pain, and no advantage.

So he undertook to remove her from life, from pain, from hopelessness. And in so doing relieved also her loving family for whom her pain and constant surgical distractions drained them of emotion, of faith in fairness and justice, with no agency to appeal to for help, temporal or spiritual.

The hostility, spite and resounding anger of those representing the interests of people living with intractable and compounded bodily incapacities was boundless. They screamed for justice for the child whose life was taken by her father.

Assuming she'd had a life. It was an improbably cruel existence. Most people, though, felt the compassion owed to this man, and to his unfortunate child.

Justice of some kind has since taken its course. His family was deprived of his presence for too many years. And Robert Latimer feels his incarceration to have been one of societal revenge, not justice. And he may be entirely correct.