Caylee Marie was not my daughter, my granddaughter or my niece. I can't pretend that her life and death impacted me in the way I'm sure it impacted many who knew her personally. Still, I share my experience to demonstrate the affects of this horrible crime.
I was suprised and sad when I found out Caylee was missing. As the months went by, I followed the case hoping that statistics would be proved wrong, and Caylee would come home to her family safe and sound. In the meantime, my daily life went on. I had real world concerns to attend to. One of those real world concerns was a friend of mine who was waiting for a liver transplant. Because of his condition he could not do everything around the house that an otherwise healthy husband might do. So, from time to time my husband and I and other family friends would do what we could to help him and his family.
So it was that I came to be in my friend's living room one night in December. I drove there straight from work and said hello to the others gathered there to help with the project of replacing the bath in the bathroom. My eyes were suddenly drawn to the television hanging on the wall, and I couldn't believe the caption on the news story: Caylee had been found. In a trashbag. Discarded. Alone.
This news would have been sad in and of itself. However, it hit me like a brick where I stood. One year ago, I had stood in this same room, in practically the same spot, saying goodbye to another beautiful little girl. I knew at the time that Natalie's cancer was winning. Her hospital bed from hospice was in the living room where the couch once stood. I had brought her a music box because she couldn't get up to play anymore and I thought maybe that would be something she could still enjoy even if she was too weak to play. Three days after that visit I stood there again, comforting her parents after she had left us. She was six.
Watching that television, I knew I couldn't stay. I made apologies and excuses and left for home, crying most of the way. I just couldn't get over how many years my friends spent in different hospitals, different doctors and treatments, going to the ends of the Earth to save their little girl, and the fact that a healthy Caylee's life was cut short for no reason. I couldn't get past Natalie's last days and how everyone was there for her 24/7, and that she died with her parents holding her hands and comforting her and that Caylee was thrown in a trunk. I couldn't get past seeing her in the casket in her favorite "princess" dress, and all the balloons that adorned the funeral home because she loved balloons, and Caylee was put in a trashbag in the woods alone.
I don't think I would have connected these two events were it not for happening to be right there when Caylee was found. From a personal standpoint, Natalie's death will always be more painful for me because she was someone I knew and loved. However from a human standpoint, Caylee's is infinitely more painful because Caylee did NOT have to die. She did not have to be discarded like trash. Caylee did not deserve a death sentence. She was shown no mercy. It is my fervent hope that justice will prevail and such a tragic loss will not go unpunished.
There is still hope and good in the world. My friend did eventually get his liver transplant. Some anonymous family, facing the pain of their own loss, made a choice to consider the pain of another, and give a miraculous gift to another family they have never known. As a community, this is what untold numbers across the globe have come together to do for Caylee. Much has been made of the sensational coverage of this case. I hear comments from time to time about our spectator society. I can only say that the day that we don't care when a crime like this occurs, is the day I will have lost some faith in our world. We could not help her when she needed help, but we're here now, and we can make sure that she will never again be forgotten, discarded, ignored. We will do what we can for her, and today that is to demand justice for Caylee.
