Springboards

A different perspective

With a history of self-harm, five attempts in less than a year, I can believe Tony Worrell never intended to kill anyone but himself when he deliberately drove into Katie Powles’ car. On the day of the crash he had been discharged from hospital after of one of these attempts. His defence is that he is a diabetic, was suffering from low blood sugar and was drunk, and that this caused him to drive on the wrong side of the road, but I wonder who would buy that? Obviously not the jury.

I had a conversation with a mother who had seriously thought of doing something similar. At the time she was dreadfully unhappy. She would look at oncoming cars and, more especially, trucks and would think it would be so easy to just drive onto the other side of the road and end it all.  She looked at those vehicles as ‘objects,’ as if they were a kind of wall, never thinking that there was a person or people inside, let alone that they might get hurt or killed. She wasn’t even thinking of her young children and how they would fare in life left behind, that came later.  It was only with the publicity around this case that she finally thought of the people who would have been in those vehicles. All these years later, she realised that she could have so easily been Tony Worrell.

I feel sad for Katie Powles’ family and friends and understand their anger.  I also feel sad for Tony Worrell. Such misery! I don’t think I have ever seen such a desperately unhappy person. He has been convicted of murder with a non-parole period of 14 years, higher than the usual 10 years, because of the “callous way he tried to draw attention to his plight.” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/crime/news/article.cfm?c_id=30&objectid=10626447 But people who are suicidal are so focussed on their pain they can’t see the bigger picture. They don’t empathise with others. They don’t consider the consequences of their actions.

I hope Tony Worrell gets the help he so obviously needs, and I hope his appeal leads to a lesser sentence. Without intervention Tony Worrell will die in prison. Unfortunately hardly anyone cares.

To understand, to forgive, and to reconcile

What leads a woman who has lost her much loved husband to a drunk driver to smile at and give a hug and kiss to the man who took his life, influencing the judge to deliver a lesser sentence?  Twenty years ago Anne Krueger read a book that, translated into English, had the title ‘To understand, to forgive, and to reconcile.’ Those words stayed with her so that she forgave the man who ran down her cyclist husband then drove on, and also forgave for the process she went through afterwards, the people who didn’t understand her grief, and the situations that upset her.  She didn’t want to hate, she forgave the man in the belief that “We all want to have peace in our souls and in our lives, and not always to carry a burden and [be] blaming ourselves and other people” (Weekend Herald 13/02/2010, p A7 ‘Widow offers drunk driver forgiveness’).

I wonder what Anne Krueger said to herself and what picture she had in her mind of the man who was responsible for the death of her husband that she was able to forgive.  It seems she sought to understand him as part of forgiveness. I hope I would have what it takes to understand, then forgive and reconcile if ever I should have the misfortune to be in similar position. On her own survival, Anne Krueger says she has, “a corner of my brain that says ‘you will get there.’”