PJBoosinger

"My sweet, sweet Corinne had grown completely inconsolable. She had learned to hide her feelings from her friends. But the two of us were lost, alone and afraid. Corinne just kept on asking, 'Why won't God let me die?' We hadn't slept at all and neither one of us could stop crying when we were together," read a typed note that police found in the kitchen.

I’m not at all sure Jayne Peters isn’t speaking of herself and superimposing her own feelings upon her daughter Corinne although I have no doubt that Corrine was certainly traumatized and still grieving the death of her father.

“The note, which also gave instructions on how to care for the family's two dogs and four cats… City Manager Clay Phillips said he had been asking the mayor since November about at least $4,000 in questionable charges on her city-issued credit card. Phillips said there appeared to be personal charges for items such as clothing and pet supplies. He said he had sent her an e-mail about the issue on Monday and asked the city attorney to look into the matter on Tuesday.  City officials released a report for the second quarter of 2010 that included more than 40 items and services that the city paid on the mayor's behalf. Among them were three charges totaling more than $1,700 to a rental car agency in suburban Dallas and three charges totaling more than $500 at a Coppell grocery store.”

“Peters' home, appraised at nearly $423,000, had been posted for foreclosure last July, but never made it to auction, according to the Foreclosure Listing Service…”

Jayne Peters shot her 19 year old daughter and then herself with a gun “borrowed from Cedar Hill Mayor Rob Franke.”  Jayne’s husband died of cancer in 2008 and clearly her world began to come apart at the seams.  Why didn’t she ask for help?  It appears that she did as there were prescription anti-depressants in the home.

“She had learned to hide her feelings from her friends.”  Those are the words that echo.  It is what we expect people to do now in our “let’s be happy” world.  We delude ourselves that there is some magical safety net for us when things go wrong but that is a delusion.  Not only is there no safety net, not even a nominal one, friends and family are oblivious to the signs of distress and society will attack like vultures to pick the bones before one is even close to dead.

Had Jayne Peters reached out for help, she, her daughter, and their pets would have gone hungry and probably homeless very quickly.  There would have been animal rights activists standing by ready, willing, and quite able to snatch the beloved pets from them the moment their condition declined and they could see the vulnerability.

Why didn’t she ask for help?  Because she was smart enough to know that would have been disastrous too and clearly more than she could stand.

Less than $6,000 over about 8 months; for food, clothing, transportation, and pet supplies.  Obviously she wasn’t being extravagant.

There are many more out there right this minute just like Jayne was last month, in the position she was last November or the months just after her husband died and YOU know them.  Will you reach out to your friends and family?  Realize that real people have real problems and that you could help without harming just by helping them to not be ashamed by not threatening to take what little bit they have left by standing together to keep the government or others from taking that tiny bit they have by helping them brainstorm some solutions to stumble through until this country is back on its feet?

I can’t really think of much that is worse than shaming people for failing to be bulletproof from the economy except to rip their beloved pets from them instead of helping them to keep them while they work toward rebuilding.  We who love animals know what a boon they are to us and what their chances are in a public shelter when surrendered.  That is exactly why people just hang onto their pets as they and the pets decline together.  That’s often how they end up in such poor condition prior to a seizure.

In this case, Jayne preempted the timeline and virtually assured that someone will see those pets get good homes but she took her own life and that of her daughter in the process.  I suspect she learned quickly that no safety net really existed after her husband died.

None of this is new or even news but merely the repeating of a cycle.  We’ve been here before and through this cycle twice in my lifetime but I must say this round seems so much worse than the last and America seems less American than it did 40 years ago.  We seem far more uncaring, more violent, more covetous, less moral, and it is all hidden behind a veneer of “HAPPY”.

All in all, it is yet another day when I mourn man’s inhumanity to man that resulted in 2 human deaths and trauma for 6 pets.  I mourn for all of us who can’t seem to realize and fix our inhumanity to one another.  Wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.  Shorthand terms for the 7 deadly sins but I think I prefer the original from the Old Testament:

Proverbs 6:16-19 Proverbs 6

• 16 These six things doth the LORD hate : yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
• 17 A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
• 18 An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
• 19 A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

These basic concepts probably stretch back in time to the beginning of humans so it matters not to me what source one cites so long as we understand that these “sins” will be our downfall if we do not learn to treat one another with humanity and that begins by avoiding these and similar specified inhumanities.