On Fragility

Harley Dilly

One of the results of experiencing the death of a child is that you learn that it isn’t rare. Until my son Daniel died of sudden arrhythmic death syndrome, the day after Thanksgiving, eleven years ago, I had only known one person who’d lost a child, other than in stillbirth. Following Daniel’s death, I think many people I’d known felt the need to convey that they too had lost a child they too had been half way through raising. People who, until then, had been acquaintances told me that they had lost children to car accidents, choking while eating, to leukemia, to unrecognized Type I diabetes mellitus, and even to the flu. I learned that the loss of a child isn’t nearly as rare as we would like it to be. Still, I am one of the lucky ones in that my child was loved, happy and healthy, until the moment he wasn’t. I did immediate CPR on him while the sheriff brought the AED, and the helicopter ICU landed on our farm in front of the house. I was probably the first to know he hadn’t made it, despite the fact that I let them try for a considerable period of time afterward.

As a result, I have a lot of empathy for those who have lost a child. I have particular empathy for those whose children are missing. My grief is simple. I lost my beautiful youngest son at 12, but I always knew exactly where he was and what was happening, and I know I did my best. In the US, we have huge numbers of children who are missing. Sometimes, these are teens, children or kids who were temporarily housed in foster care. Sometimes, these are children or teens who have been snatched by non-custodial parents. Sometimes, these are teens or children who are the victim of stranger abduction, either by pedophiles or human traffickers who want them for other reasons. I know where my boy is, but many do not. Not to know where your child is, or whether he needs you, must be one of this Earth’s most difficult feelings. It is for this reason that I profile missing teens and children on my social media pages. Today, Amber Alerts are often quite successful and a child may well be returned to his or her parents, and so it’s worth the effort and the occasional grief I myself experience.

On December 20^th, a fourteen year old Ohio teen was reported missing by his family. Harley Dilly quite literally disappeared without a trace. No one saw anyone abduct him, and hundreds of local citizens and the police combed about a hundred and fifty acres looking for him. Each day, I combed news reports in order to keep my own social media listings of missing kids up to date. All through Christmas and New Year’s Day there was no news on Harley Dilly. Yesterday however, his body was found by police in a summer home around the corner from his own, within the chimney. It has been theorized that possibly close to the hours in which Harley was first reported missing, he had climbed a large antennae which enabled him to enter the chimney of the empty house. His coat and his glasses were found near the flue. His body was found wedged tightly within the house’s chimney. Harley had been there almost four weeks before he had finally been found. Police had actually considered searching the house, but the windows and doors had been secured when they searched and so they thought there had been no way he could have entered. I am praying for his family and for those who searched for him, and especially for those who found him and dealt with the aftermath.

Because I am older than Harley Dilly I know that periodically a burglar is found dead within a chimney. The lucky ones are discovered by a homeowner, and emergency services deconstructs the chimney while taking the perpetrator first to a hospital, and then to jail. If you are an EMS or Law Enforcement officer, and you are looking for a person with dementia, confusion, or a teen or child, please consider checking both ends of any chimneys. If you are a parent or a grandparent, you might consider telling the children you know that chimneys are not built as some of them were in colonial times or in our folklore. Many of them might be very narrow in the center or may have a flue that makes them impassable. This Christmas when I was reading a story to my grandson, I conveyed that when Santa comes to our house that we don’t have a chimney that can accommodate him, and that we just let him in when he arrives.

The vision of an adventurous fourteen year old trapped in a narrow chimney, cold, thirsty, fearful and unable to take a deep breath, haunts me, as I’m sure it does his parents, his family, and the people who were involved in the exhaustive search for him. The medical examiner released the cause of death as compressive asphyxia, which implies that he died rather quickly, and not over days or weeks as my own imagination had been considering.

There are too many ways to lose a child. Make sure yours know how much they are valued, and how much you love them. Help them to identify the reasonable hazards in your area. Most importantly, have compassion for those who have lost a child, have one missing, or who must seek or recover a child as part of their occupation.