When I saw the first picture of Tia Coleman, the woman who lost nine family members on a duck boat accident in Missouri, my first thought was “how can she survive this terrible loss?” Most of us have experienced at least one or two serious losses, and somehow gone on with our lives. But it’s hard to imagine anything worse than losing your husband and 3 children, plus five other relatives all at once.
Then, I remembered Betty Spencer, who was the sole survivor of the 1977 Valentine’s Day home invasion and murders of her two sons and two stepsons by four men armed with sawed off shotguns . After being shot in the head, she lay still and pretended to be dead. Betty was a patient at the Indiana hospital where I worked. I don’t remember how long she was there, although I’m sure it was several weeks. But I do remember seeing the nurses pushing her up and down the hallways in a wheelchair, day after day. Pale and ghostly, Betty stared straight ahead, with vacant, unseeing eyes, never moving a muscle until they finally returned her to her room. I never saw her stand , walk, eat, talk, or smile. At the time, I thought, “this woman will never survive. She’ll probably have to be put in a nursing home.” She later said that during that time, she was begging God to let her die.
And yet, four years later, she found the strength and courage to found the Parke County Victims’ Advocate Foundation , and became a national speaker on victims’ rights before her death in 2004, “The Hollandsburg Murders taught me that I am not afraid to die,” she wrote in a February 1988 Bereavement magazine article, “But more than that I have learned that I am not afraid to live!”
I have a feeling Tia Coleman will find a way to survive and I wish her Godspeed on the difficult journey ahead.
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