lucy wightman

Anger, pain and hope mark journey as mother sorts through ‘ugly possibilities’ behind her daughter’s death.

COMMENTARY - Lucy Wightman

The Patriot Ledger
Posted Feb 14, 2009 @ 06:00 AM
Last update Feb 14, 2009 @ 08:31 PM
QUINCY —

Google “baby book” and you will see well over 1 million hits. I am not a baby book expert, judge or critic but the importance of the project is naturally understood. Its contents are often in a bound book that fills with markers of new life and bulges in a forgotten closet. Crafted chronologically using glue, tape, staples and folds, ingredients vary but typically include photographs, vignettes, handwritten dates, hair tufts and colorful tags made by the loving hands of maternity nurses. Some more eccentric creations might include a tooth or dried umbilical cord. We do not tell a mother she is wrong for telling the story in whatever manner she likes.

Stories are intrinsic and reflexive to humans. It is how we know and how we remember. I dismantled a baby book once because its collection of memories was too crowded and the damage too lonely. Torri will not have her baby book, but as I continue to mother my only child past her impossible death, I will have her death story.

Senior investigative producer Kristen Setera called over one year ago from WCVB to tell me about a report showing that the Plympton area had the worst trauma response record in the state. Initially I could not see the relevance but in time her information motivated me and gave me direction.

In requesting records from Plympton, I was desperate for truth where it could be found. Living under a weight of nightly concoctions, attempting to replace and reorder the missing pages, I was ready for the facts. Friendly enough interchanges with Chief David Rich had promise but what was rightfully mine never arrived.

I did not take lightly the decision to make a complaint. The tragedy belongs not only to me, but also to those who, standing in rain and gasoline, worked to save young lives. Calling into question any individual who will never forget that day was not my purpose. Having any one responder feel that they could have done more was not my intention.

Renee Lake is the compliance coordinator at the Office of Emergency Management who I commended for her humanity and professionalism before the report arrived to me in the mail. Its findings took my breath away: Citing Plympton Fire Department for failure to assess, resuscitate and transport a patient.

The death story, now changed, replete with ugly, helpless possibilities, has as its author an unconscionable man. Legal advice notwithstanding, Chief Rich’s lack of memory regarding the end of a sparkling, thriving teenage life is viscerally disturbing. I will not accept that my only child’s life was so dismissed, so insignificant that a person in this authority does not recall covering her beautiful, perfect, bloodied face with a sheet. Or how it was she came to be called “dead.” If indeed there is such deep memory loss I do not know how he can be in charge of any emergency response at all.

Torri’s will certainly not be the last premature, violent, senseless death in the Plympton area. If during my selfish grief-driven quest, I can gift myself the opportunity to prevent anything resembling my pain, in a parent, a victim or a responder I am grateful. In doing so, a sprightly, lanky girl with changeable blue-green eyes lives on, if only in story.

Lucy Wightman writes from Hull.