Family Life - And Death

At some time, during their twenty years of marriage, living together in enough harmony one must presume, to produce two children, something went dreadfully awry.  A family is now destroyed.  The depth and extent of that destruction is obvious.  It seemed that at least during the last handful of years the family of four - mother, father and two teen sons - shared in what appeared outwardly to be a normal, functioning familial relationship, life descended into hell.

The children's father, husband of their mother, the man who loved them and by all accounts acted as a doting, caring father to them, is dead.  Dead at his own desperate hands.  He drove himself to a conservation area not far from their nice middle-class home in the suburbs of Ottawa and hanged himself.  Before he did that, though, while their two boys, 12 and 15 years of age were at school, he attacked their mother, his wife.

He was distraught, explained his brother and his sister-in-law.  He was dreadfully unhappy.  More than miserable, he had become fairly unhinged.  He was, they say now, suffering from mental illness.  His life had turned upside down and inside-out and he saw no future that he could recognize or would wish to inhabit.  He mentioned to them the potential of suicide, then in their hearing, brushed it aside.

He had beaten her so severely that all her recognizable features were destroyed.  "He bashed her skull to the point they had to take part of her brain out.  I have never seen brutality like that ever in my life."  These are the descriptive words of Therese Lefebvre's mother.  She had encouraged her daughter on several occasions before this dreadful event had occurred, to leave him.

But she resisted leaving her husband.  Even though she had described on a number of occasions how she suffered at his hands.  After one assault, when police were called she refused to lay charges.  Hoping, as people are wont to do, that miraculously everything would change.  He would realize the severity of his behaviour, how brutalized she was by him, and feel hugely regretful, and never, ever repeat that behaviour.

Frances Moreau, Theresa Lefebvre's mother, said "It didn't come out of nowhere.  She was very afraid of him."  This was her brief story about the latter events in the married life of her daughter.  Abuse that began four years ago.  This is a picture of a son-in-law that the mother of the woman he attempted to murder has enshrined in her memory of him, the father of her two grandchildren.

This is not the picture that has been painted by his brother, by his brother's wife.  They insist he was a loving, compassionate father and husband.  Going out of his way to do things for his family, and extending that willingness to the society they lived in.  Responding to social welfare needs in support of fundraising for cancer research and treatment.  And in sport events that involved his sons.

"Like all partnerships, there were ups and downs, most recently Theresa asking for a divorce because she no longer loved him, not because he abused her", read a statement submitted by the father's brother's wife.  This is obviously a personal version well suited to the belief of those who love someone prefer to maintain; we are all inclined to the subjective.

The thought of a divorce he had no wish to take place sank Peter Lefebvre, according to his older brother, into deep depression.  His wife would likely have lost her love for her husband because he violently, viciously abused her.  And, unwilling to be subjected to any additional and ongoing abuse, opted for divorce, a reasonable enough and rational solution.  This is classic cause and effect.

He is dead.  She remains in an induced coma after brain surgery, with another operation scheduled but put on hold because of her deteriorating condition.  And two young boys who have obviously been witness to more familial grief and strife than they could conceivably abide, are living a nightmare they cannot wake from.

No one, in this colossal tragedy will emerge the better for it.  All their lives have been irremediably altered to reflect the dreadful misery of human fallibility and failure.