Get your daily dose of grief porn here
There was a horrible car accident recently where a young couple on their way to work got killed in a head-on crash with a semi-truck. They left behind three small children. The driver (the husband?) appeared to have been on the wrong side of the winding country road going around a curve at 5:30 in the morning. Dead in a horrible instant. For some reason I kept coming back to this, watching the "GoFundMe" and the Facebook Memorial page spring up. I honestly didn't know EITHER of these twenty-four year olds, nor did my 23 and 25 year old children. I don't know why I lingered to watch. The term "grief porn" applies: it's when you are voyeuristically watching someone else's strong emotions without actually having to experience the messiness of the personal relationship yourself.
Yesterday there was a terrible house fire a few towns over. I saw it hit my news feed and decided to give it a pass, I'd already binged on grief porn.
Today I realized they were my clients.
The self-employed father was terribly (mortally?) injured trying to save his daughter's life, but she was hiding in a closet with a friend (from the fire they set?) and the children died. He's in critical condition with smoke inhalation and life-threatening burns. I believe their daughter was seven.
This isn't porn to me anymore. I wrote an immediate email to the wife (offering to do their taxes for free, duh, what else can I do?) and I promoted the GoFundMe that some friend put up about it where it'll do some good (just checking, yep, $10K so far, twice as much for my client's family as the other child's family, which is approximately the impact of me promoting one of them but not the other.) I'm praying for the father and scared to death for him.
Yesterday there was a terrible house fire a few towns over. I saw it hit my news feed and decided to give it a pass, I'd already binged on grief porn.
Today I realized they were my clients.
The self-employed father was terribly (mortally?) injured trying to save his daughter's life, but she was hiding in a closet with a friend (from the fire they set?) and the children died. He's in critical condition with smoke inhalation and life-threatening burns. I believe their daughter was seven.
This isn't porn to me anymore. I wrote an immediate email to the wife (offering to do their taxes for free, duh, what else can I do?) and I promoted the GoFundMe that some friend put up about it where it'll do some good (just checking, yep, $10K so far, twice as much for my client's family as the other child's family, which is approximately the impact of me promoting one of them but not the other.) I'm praying for the father and scared to death for him.