By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
It is high summer in Fall River, Massachusetts, once a focal point of American commerce and the most elegant of sailing ships, now a city defined by its gnawing problems and of people who arrive only to count the days until they leave this way station to something better.
Many of these new arrivals are Hispanic and the place where the most adamant of New Englanders flourished is now a place where often the language is Spanish and the orientation Latin. How surprised the mariners of Massachusetts would have been... but even they, unhappily seeing the transformation of their works, would have looked twice at the radiant smile of Marie Joseph, the kind of smile that lightens loads, brings people together, and holds them together when it's needed, as it always is.
Marie Joseph graced lives, she did not impose upon them. Such people are too rare... always valued.... the sinews on which all communities rely, especially the ones which seem to have more than their share of problems.
The new arrivals, not yet ascending to country club status, rely on the plethora of municipal services which, in this year 2011, are stressed, pressured, threatened, deteriorating. But more needed than ever... especially if that service is the state-run swimming pools that provide relief on the so-hot summer days you always forget are a sweltering feature of summer hereabouts.
The thought of the beckoning pool, aqua marine, cool, refreshing, a blessing to folks without air conditioning is just what Marie Joseph wanted... and so, arrayed in that smile that wouldn't quit, she made her way to the modern city's version of the old swimming hole. In the last picture of Marie Joseph, taken the day before she died (June 26, 2011) her smile is incandescent, radiant, cast on the child in her arms with plenty left over for the rest of the world.
That image should have defined the event and the day, a happy memory in a life of challenges and tribulations... Instead, that image stands as irony, proof (if it were ever needed) that life is short, can never be taken for granted, and can end in ways inexplicable and horrifying... as it was about to do for Marie Joseph.
The water slide took her down indeed, to the conclusion of a brief life, just 36 years.
She saw the water slide. It looked fun... especially as she watched a nine-year-old neighbor go down the slide accompanied by the full panoply of quips, expressions, and ear-shattering squeals all kids horde for just such events. She was game. You had to take your fun when and where you could.
As she slid down the water slide into death and eternity, no one (except the nine-year-old) paid any attention. No need. That water slide was popular and no one gave it a second thought. But this day something went terribly wrong... while people who should have seen saw nothing... or at least they say so now...
The first horror: death by drowning, surrounded by people.
Marie Joseph may have known how to swim; her friends and family are not sure. She didn't ask. Why should she; she had watched her young friend use the slide joyously; she probably didn't know the water was 12 feet deep. Once in the water, Marie was in trouble... and must have made a fearful racket as anyone would as they faced the reality of their situation and fought for life. How could this death struggle happen before so many... with only one person, her young neighbor doing anything to assist?
He at least knew something was wrong and tried to pull Marie up, to safety; and when he failed, he called upon the lifeguard for assistance. But demi-god in his Ray Bans, he had better things to do than his job; ignoring kids' babble was part of what made him so cool and exalted.
Here the story goes from tragedy to the macabre, from one family's grief to an enduring symbol of ineptitude, scandal, and staggering incompetence.
Marie Joseph was now dead... but no one knew it...
The friends she came with wondered where she had gone; something no doubt had come up; she'd tell them later. And so the sunburnt children wanting more... and their mothers who had had enough, all went home...
... leaving the body of Marie Joseph entombed in water, her raven tresses in constant movement under the water under the summer's night. And so on this cheerful day did Marie Joseph pass a night peaceful perhaps for her, but of mounting worry and concern for her family and friends. Where had she and her radiant smile gone?
Business as usual.
The next day was business as usual... the kids came to swim and scream, the mothers to watch and gossip, complaining about the temperature and how hot it was; the lifeguard, high above, looked down on the scene and wondered if his girl was cheating on him, of all people.
And throughout this day, mere feet below the teaming activity, the lifeless body of Marie Joseph moved to the water's beat, its whereabouts known only to God. Yes, on this evening, too, and throughout the stages of the night, did her unseeing eyes abide in their incomprehensible resting place.
And, though its staggers belief, it went on for another day... another day with the corpse swimming with youngsters... and where chary mothers saw nothing... and lifeguards with plum summer jobs, envied, yet saw absolutely nothing.
And still the story worsens, morphing from the shocking to the incredible.
Now officials, making a periodic visit, appeared. Despite the inexplicable disappearance of Marie Joseph, now common gossip, these officials made only the most cursory of inspections... not one suspecting that the pool itself and its cloudy waters held the body. Like everyone else but one small boy they looked... and saw nothing, though the corpse of a beautiful woman was dissolving into debris....
... which teams of lifeguards missed and even the people charged daily with inspecting the pool, cleaning it, keeping the waters fresh and clear. Add these, too, to the staggering number who should have seen... but say they did not.
Now, of course, alarm bells ringing in the face of widespread condemnation, officials great and small come slowly forward, mutter platitudes, and run for cover. A tiny fraction of this energy would easily have saved the life of Marie Joseph or at least given her honorable burial, sparing her from becoming a thing of horror and nightmare. For such she has become, no longer the beloved person she was but a fearful presence for the children who now see a place of sun, light, air and shimmering water as a place of dread and abhorrence, wondering what else they may find there.
Marie Joseph did not deserve her fate. Let some poignant lines from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, provide her one better:
"Who is this? and what is here? And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer; And they cross'd themselves for fear, All the knights at Camelot: But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott." (1842).
$20,000 Monthly From Home
Learn how, call or msg me on Skype
Richard Penny
Online Success Coach
1-(800)985-0604
Skype ID = richieace
http://earnonlinesuccess.com
http://homebusinesspremium.com/articles/
No comments:
Post a Comment