KEY POINTS:
It should be commonplace, universally agreed, that every parent knows the secret fear you feel whenever you lend your child to the risks of the world.
Because that shaft of fear, short felt, suppressed, withheld from bright young eyes excited by the prospect of adventure, is one measure of what it means to be a parent. It's a symptom of love and a sign of the distance we've travelled on the journey from innocence to experience.
So we should be able to say it's every parent's secret fear. But we can't. Some parents don't care enough. They don't care that they can be as suddenly violent as a river in flood.
If they did care there wouldn't be a trial - another trial - just begun in Auckland, confirming again the inescapable fact that, in this country, the needless fury of people can steal life from a child as quickly as the heedless fury of nature.
The deeds of people will be judged in a trial of evidence. The acts of nature have become - for the parents of seven children, one an adult teacher - a test of faith.
The trial will be reported, of course. And so will the test. We will learn much of both. As spectators, we will have some sense, muted by distance, of what each means to those involved. We will form views.
We will condemn or forgive, as we see fit. We may hold someone, or something, accountable. But, above all, at least with the test, almost every parent will share a bond with those for whom the secret fear is now an awful truth.
A truth no proper parent would ever wish to face. Because its cruelty is its meaning.
No real parent wants the world to be a place where one random shrug can indifferently end a life. But we know it is. And that is why we have our secret fears. And hope they never become real.
Most of the time, we don't tell our children about our fears. The rational part of us insists they're out of proportion - a measure of the neurosis we all suffer in an over-reported age.
My son, for example, plays rugby. He's a prop and he wants to be an All Black. I want him to understand what this means. So I tell him about old All Blacks who ran up steep hills 20 times a day or plodded round muddy country grounds, the rain in their face, after a hard game while everyone else was in the club rooms, laughing and drinking and getting warm.
"Wow," he says. And I can tell he doesn't know what the stories mean.
What I don't tell him is that I once filmed a story about scrums and spinal injuries and how exuberant boys were particularly at risk. I don't tell him partly because the rules have changed since then.
But, mainly, I didn't tell him because I don't want him to be infected with the fear that stabs me for an instant every time a scrum goes down. I want him to embrace risk, because that's where he'll find reward. I don't want him to fear risk, because I know if he does he will approach it awkwardly and thus make it greater. There's as many ways to tell that story as there are parents to tell it. We do judge risk on our children's behalf and usually, say with school camps or regattas or swimming in the river, our silence is the verdict we pass on our concern. Beyond a general caution - "Have fun. Be careful." - we let nature take its course.
Now seven families wish they had not. And, on their behalf, we try to make sense of things beyond reason. "Why did God let this happen?" the journalists ask, implying to people whom they knew worship an omnipotent and merciful deity, that, if he was going to take anyone, it should not have been children who believed in him.
Oddly enough, we appear to hold God only accountable for the random acts of nature. In none of the recent cases where parents or family members have killed a child has anyone asked, "Why did God let them do this?" Nor does he get credit for the countless good deeds done every day.
God is responsible for the world, it seems, but not for us.
In the end, the believer will say, a universe created is not a universe controlled. And the non-believer will pay homage to the accidents of matter. But only the meanest non-believer would deny or denounce any faith that gives comfort in grief. "We'll see u in heaven" was one message on the Elim College wall. Those of us outside the sadness should not sully that conviction.
Better we remember something repeated by a grieving father whose daughter, no fan of the outdoors, had told him before she left his home - and this world - that "We're going to jump in puddles, Dad." We're going to have fun. Make the best of things.
Hold that thought. For it is all that any of us can do. In the best and worst of times.
