How Sad

There are so many sad things going on in this world. The earthquake in Peru, the bridge collapse in Minnesota, starvation in third world countries, the Iraq war just to name a few. But today - this one caught me by surprise and pulled at my heartstrings dramatically.

"Man kissed ailing wife, threw her off balcony, prosecutors say" http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/16/wife.killed.ap/index.html
Apparently his wife was dying of uterine cancer and other ailments and he couldn't keep up with the medical bills. The details were a little bit sketchy - they don't say what her prognosis was, if he had applied for medical assistance, etc. but how sad.

How sad for his wife who was pushed off a building to her death. I can't imagine what it would have felt like to know what he was doing and not be able to stop it - or worse yet, to not want to have stopped it. And how sad for him. To be in a situation where you feel like that is your last option. How sad.

I can't pretend to know their situation, but I must say that things like this just shouldn't happen. People should have a place to turn when nothing else has worked, when they have no other options. Scratch that - people should have a place to turn before it gets that bad - when they can see that the future is bleak.

This type of thing can be stopped - Medicaid could help, Social Security for the disabled, state aid, etc. That's not to mention a national health insurance program would have made this story non-existent.

God bless her, her husband and their families. I hope he can forgive himself and that she is in a better place.