With Malice Toward None

With Malice Toward None

Life happens. A joyous occasion,
generally. Death also happens, an
occasion far less celebrated. Life and
death enjoy a sealed pact, an agreement 
in principle and in fact, a covenant of
universal proportions and stark
inevitability. They are obedient servants
of nature. And nature herself is obedient
to her very own fascinated dedication to 
the eternality of timely repetition. This is 
her fundamental formula. She has
conscripted biology to allow her
organisms to beget and to take pleasure
in so doing. She has relieved them from
giving aid to the Angel of Death for they
view that creature with morbid dread.
She has invested her organisms in an
indomitable will to survive; begetting is 
a tool, defying the finality of death. It
does offend her when her plans go awry. 
Who better, after all, to entrust an
infant's tender care on occasion to,
other than the maternal grandmother?
Now herself destined to represent one
of those grating anomalies; death of the
spirit while the corporeal essence survives.
An emotional turmoil resulting from a
momentary lapse in informed judgement
when the presence of the infant is
forgotten, alone in a vehicle, on a day
miserably tumescent with summer heat.

The maternal grandmother of a toddler who 
died from heat exposure after being left alone 
inside a car last week has been criminally 
charged with her grandson's death.