By BERN MORLEY
I had a feeling that day, the day of the accident.
It was hard to pinpoint the feeling though, something just felt “off”. I really should have trusted my instincts…
As parents, we are forever on a silent, clinical guard, fighting and trying to protect our children from the obvious and visible dangers they will be subjected to.
We sweep the local park for needles, make them wear a helmet when they ride their bikes, carefully help them across the monkey bars (largest cause of broken arms FYI) remove the spider from the corner of the room, make sure they wear a life jacket when on a boat, childproof the poisons cupboard, all the stuff that you do because you are a responsible parent right? Right?
But what about all those dangers we can’t even imagine, situations we couldn’t prevent unless we perpetually lived in a state of worst case scenario. What about something so miniscule that changes your life forever, that you never in a million Sundays, saw coming.
That’s exactly what happened to Nathania Terry.
After a freak and unfortunate series of events led to her five month old baby being crushed to death on a baggage carousel.
“Fresh details have emerged from a horrifying incident at Spain’s Alicante Airport, where a five-month-old baby was crushed to death in a baggage carousel. “The family is going through a difficult situation right now,” he said.
According to police, Mrs Terry climbed onto the baggage carousel to retrieve a baby stroller while holding her son.
Mrs Terry accidentally caused the belt to start, and she lost her grip on the baby, who fell onto the moving carousel.
Airport staff said the accident happened in seconds. Mrs Terry had no time to react, and could only scream in horror as her baby was killed. Medical staff could not revive the child, and he was declared dead at the scene.”
This is absolutely tragic, a situation so terrible I hope Mrs Terry is able to forgive herself. I can only imagine how fractured she is right now. I also hope that she is not being judged by those who believe she did something wrong. It was an accident.
My own story didn’t end as tragically as this but it certainly had the potential to. And it made me understand how easy these things can happen, seemingly from nowhere.
See, I couldn’t imagine that a day out with my husband on a boat would almost kill my son. Because it wasn’t a near drowning, it wasn’t a freak motor explosion, it wasn’t even an unexpected shark attack. It involved nothing more than a dropped hat and some bitumen. An accident that damaged my 3 year old son so badly I didn’t know if I’d get to ever speak to him again.
My husband had decided to give me a break away from it all, just for a day. So from something so thoughtful, something unimaginable happened. When he suggested that he take our three children on his brother’s boat with their 3 children, I was uneasy. 2 dads, 6 very active children, it didn’t feel right. Mainly I was worried that Jack, being only 3, would silently slip off the boat unseen and drown. Phil was adamant they’d be fine ‘they’ll be wearing a lifejackets’.
Top Comments
I had one of these instances happen only yesterday. In fact, I actually saw this article yesterday but couldn't read it because of our near miss.
I took my nine and four year old to see a film yesterday. It was a big day and I was pretty tired.
Waiting on the Melbourne Central platform for the train home, I had to be pretty vigilant with my four year old. He's usually really good but this time he was just so fascinated by the tunnel and trains. My nine year old loves the dumb ways to die animations and I had to keep reminding my four year old that what he was doing was what the song was about! Anyway, when we got off at our station, I was fumbling with our myki cards for two seconds and in the meantime my four year old had gone back over to the train as the doors were closing. I grabbed his arm and pulled him away just as the train started to move. Gah! What if I was longer than two seconds? What if I was completely distracted? So scary.
I asked him why, after EVERYTHING, he went past the yellow line again and he just said "Oh mum, I just wanted to see the train tracks".
I just realised I have kind of contradicted myself on a below comment I made about my son being responsible. I guess this proves it's not always the case!
I feel so terrible for Nathania. What a shock that has now - just like that - lead her to a lifelong sorrow. As someone who can get distracted quite easily, it really makes me shudder.
When you first hear of these kinds of stories, you think 'How in the hell...?', but life is truly so random. Just so sad.