He Could Have Saved Her Life!

Watching Dateline on NBC, a man named Roger* murdered his wife Anna* because she was filing for divorce after many years of marriage. A divorce would reveal his theft from his children’s trust fund. They were separated. Her blood was plastered all over her house. Her body wasn’t found. It took the police almost four years before he was charged. What increased my anger was one neighbor told the reporter that he heard a blood-curdling scream the night she went missing.

The reporter asked, “Why didn’t you call the police?”

“Oh, nothing like that happens around here,” he said.

Our environment sometimes allows some people to lose a sense of the reality of what goes on in the real world. Maybe somebody could have saved her life had he called the police when she was screaming for help. Three children lost their mother. Her husband was found guilty of her murder. He protested his innocence. Eight years later, a farmer found her body where her husband grew up.

I can’t find a word to describe her neighbor’s action, but I wished I was nearby when he said that to slap some common sense into him. Screaming when being attacked is involuntary action. It doesn’t have a special place or time. Screaming out in pain invokes a different feeling than screaming out of joy. Most of us can tell the difference between a cry for help and sounds of joy. He could have saved a life.

What goes on in my side of the world adds to my awareness. Frequent water lock-offs and power cuts force me to plan ahead. Being raised in a country with many insecurities alerts me to take nothing for granted. Poverty teaches me to think economically and ‘tun yu hand and mek fashion.’ It means using what you have and creating the impossible.

Most Jamaicans learn common sense before they can read. Life and our world taught me common sense.

It shows me how to open my imagination and unlock my innovation to find sensible ways to make any complex situation work better for me, my family, and anyone who wants to learn.

My country has a high crime rate and is prone to sporadic violence in many areas across Jamaica. Those are areas I can’t avoid sometimes. When I go in, I do what I came to do and get out. I don’t linger, thinking nothing is going to happen. My world forces me to study my surroundings and be prepared for the unexpected by hoping for the best. But be prepared for the worst.

If I weren’t born in Jamaica, I wouldn’t be who I am and know the things I do. My world is cruel and unforgiving, and it teaches me how to live and survive anywhere else I go. I demand that my sons take the time to know their world. That’s the only way they can live and survive in it.

Because nothing happens, it doesn’t mean something won’t.

Someone screaming out in pain should be a sign that someone is being hurt.

I got the word to describe her neighbor.

I think his action was cruel. Maybe, just maybe, he could have saved her life. He could have saved her family years of grief.

A mother forced to bury her child is grief no parents should endure. Young children need their mothers. She died and left her youngest child, a sixteen-year-old boy, who ended up in foster care.

Please, don’t think like this neighbor. If you hear a scream as he described, call the right people. You could be saving a life. No one will know it’s you.

Thank you for reaiding this piece. I hope you enjoy it.