Let's be a little sensitive as we publicly criticise

This week, a mother on my social media timeline lost her daughter through suicide. I am pretty sure that sadly, she is not the only one, but she happens to be the one I am aware of.

Death, in whichever form, is insanely non-negotiable, but there is something about death by suicide that leaves people close to the dead person completely and totally damaged.

They are left with questions they cannot get answers for, but the worst of it is, that they have to live with the thought that they failed the dead person that they did not do enough. It is not unheard of, that some people find it so hard to continue living, that they also commit suicide.

Now, you would think that it is only haunting that we show compassion to a bereaved person, especially one who is as closely related to the dead, as a parent. The week that was though, I learned that it is not automatic.

Based on some leaked conversations, the mother has been trolled, castigated and insulted. The texts paint the mother as a monster who hated her daughter from the moment she gave birth to her at only nineteen, but that is according to the daughter.

Perhaps because I am used to studying words for meanings deeper than how they read on the surface, I did that with the texts. If you can manage to forget, even for a minute, that one of the authors of the texts is dead, they read like typical teenage rants, when a teenager believes nobody understands them or loves them, and everybody is out to ruin their lives.

Those texts, however, presented as evidence, are damning and damaging. So I did more, I went to both the mother's and the daughter’s timelines and shock on me, I found happy family photos with body language of people who love each other.

Granted, we can act for the cameras, and thus I would like to make it clear that this piece is not set to defend the mother. Rather, it is meant to urge people to look beyond the superficial. This piece is me asking what is wrong with humanity because how are we collectively so insensitive? Have we always been this vicious?

Humans seem to thrive in projecting. They would rather deal with someone else’s problems than their own. They also have a field day when someone somewhere is seemingly having it worse than them – a type of sick affirmation.

If someone looks like they are doing worse in the humanity score-board, they will not even be bothered to find out if possibly somebody somewhere got the score wrong. We jump in and stomp on them until they are flat on the ground.

We will not stop beating until they stop breathing. For a lot of people, this bereaved mother is the epitome of evil motherhood. Right now, because of that tragedy, many people feel like better humans still have their children alive, and it does not even matter to them that their children are still toddlers.

This other may have messed up with the daughter, because one way or another, considering that none of us is superhuman and are bound to make mistakes, all of us have muddled in our parenthood journeys. Sometimes we salvage the situations, other times we leave permanent damage, and no wonder we have humans everywhere walking around with childhood baggage. But those humans, as damaged as they may be, have not committed suicide. Do we stop to ask why they beat the odds?

For anyone to actually commit suicide, they would have to be mentally unstable. Perhaps what we could blame the mother for, and I use the word blame with a lot of reservation, is that she did not spot the tell-tale signs of a mental issue. But, do we always? Even when we do, do we always succeed in curing that person?

It is gross for people to behave like blood-smelling. Also, it is a bit like throwing stones when you are living in a glass house. Lastly, all humans are sitting ducks. Anything and everything can happen to us, because it’s not about ‘why me’ but ‘why not me?’

A little compassion goes a long way.

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