Our little town recently had the double whammy of two freak accidents in the same week resulting in two deaths of children — one a toddler and one who was barely 18. That might not send shock-waves through the city but when your town has only 2000 people in it, there’s no way you won’t know someone who is related to one of the two.

Hindsight being 20/20 notwithstanding, both of the deaths were preventable — which I think is what is the most devastating thing for our community to realize.

In the case of the toddler, he basically was climbing on to his family’s entertainment system when the TV part fell and crushed him to death. I know no more details than that. How big was the TV and entertainment system? How high was it? Why was he climbing on it? Was this a behavior that was allowed? But I can hear my mother in the back of my head saying what she always says to me about my tall bookcases: secure them to the wall — you never know. I live in California, so I grew up knowing you should secure them for earthquakes. And yes, mine aren’t allowed to climb on tech equipment or jump on couches. We try to train them early to respect other people’s furniture and things — including their parents' or suffer the consequences. Still, I have a wild child myself who doesn’t always listen to rational rules and tests everything. Better to secure the equipment than fight with the 5 year old.

I don’t even want to visualize what happened to that toddler. It just takes my breath away and puts a pit in the bottom of my stomach. Somewhere in this valley a huge extended family of this boy is grieving. A little boy lost his little brother. I don’t want to scare the beejeezus out of my kids but I told them what happened to the boy — so that they do know what can happen when they chimp around the house and treat the indoors like the outdoors. Lesson they get? You could really get hurt.

In the case of the teenager, I almost think it’s more tragic in the sense that our valley has a long history of aimless youth wandering into the fickle arms of alcohol. And I know that gun ownership occurs in urban and suburban places but out here in the countryside of America, guns are given to us by God himself. I think some of us in this valley think guns are more important than food or shelter. There are families in this valley that take their four year olds out hunting. I can’t get my mind around that one. I don’t know that I could handle the innocence of children and a tool of death being part of the same outing, but that is common place here.

It was a simple equation: teen + alcohol + firearm= unintentional suicide. I know, I know. We have very little control over what a teen does when they have just turned of legal age. But the alcohol access and bullet access will sit with me for awhile. Sometimes in our town of aimless youth that are often born to aimless young adults who were born to equally aimless young adults who become grandparents in their early thirties, I think this is just a matter of course. But I don’t want to give up hope. Surely, there must be some way to prevent, if not the aimlessness then the access, or if not the access, the aimlessness? Perhaps that’s not a fair assessment of the young man, but I do know that most kids born here with a gleam in their eye and a spark in their step leave town. Those without, stay here.

All this to say — some deaths are avoidable even though death is inevitable. This valley is full of grief right now — like a giant collective breath got knocked out of us and we all fell back in the chair all at once. Somehow we must learn to strike a balance between laissez-faire parenting and helicopter parenting. Will we ever get it right?