Published: May 09, 2008 12:45 am            

‘I will not forget you’

Editor’s note: This column first was published Nov. 29, 1998



There was a funeral held in Oklahoma City last week, one of several conducted in the state’s largest city that day.

But, while most funerals are attended by the family, friends or colleagues of the deceased, this particular funeral was vastly different.

None of the attendees at this service knew the person whose memory they had gathered to honor.

“Jesus Loves Me,” the choir sang to the assemblage of some 70 people. Their message was Jesus cares for us all, including the soul whose body rested in the coffin at the front of the room. It’s a good thing, too, because it’s a good bet nobody else did.

The baby boy the crowd had come to bid adieu began his life God only knows where. He ended it in a trash bin near NW 10th and North Virginia. He was found, wrapped in brown clothing, by a man looking for aluminum cans on Nov. 16.

Jesus didn’t have it easy, God knows, dying in agony on a cross on Golgotha between two common criminals. But at least his mother loved him to the end. She was there, watching in despair as the prophecy which she knew had to be fulfilled, was fulfilled.

The mother of this little boy, who died without even a name, is being sought by police.

Jesus’ mother wrapped him in swaddling clothes and put him to bed in a manger. This little baby’s mom wrapped him in cloth and put him in a trash bin outside a thrift store, like a sack of garbage.

Not that her life has been a bed of roses, either. She’s probably not much more than a baby herself, and scared. We’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say she panicked, that she didn’t just murder her child in cold blood. He was, doctors say, alive at birth.

Maybe she was a victim of rape, or incest or just plain old stupid adolescent lust. Regardless, the child clearly was unwanted. She likely couldn’t take care of him, couldn’t afford to feed or clothe him.

But she could have loved him. She could have loved him enough to give him up, to allow him to be adopted by one of the thousands of couples who would gladly give up a limb to be able to hold a baby in their arms and know it was theirs.

Instead she wrapped him up like yesterday’s trash and put him in a garbage container. Perhaps she feels life has done that to her, but that doesn’t give her the right to do it to anybody else.

Life is a struggle. There’s disease and sorrow and strife and toil. Those he is better off not experiencing. But there also are infinite measures of joy. These he will never experience, either, nor will those who would have grown to love him.

This little boy will never cry to be cuddled in the middle of the night, never fuss to have his diaper changed and coo contentedly while giving the changer an unexpected, and unwanted, shower, as little boys often will do.

He’ll never cut his first tooth, say a first word, take a first step, take his first communion, go through confirmation or dance at his bar mitzvah.

He’ll never cry on his first day of school, laugh at a clown, yell “tag, you’re it,” “trick or treat” or “Merry Christmas.”

He’ll never date, or drive, or kiss, or play or run. He’ll never fail, he’ll never succeed.

He’ll never hug his mother’s neck and say “I love you mommy,” just loud enough for her to hear it, and feel her wrap him in her loving arms.

People die every day. Babies die every day. But few are put out with the trash like a pile of discarded newspapers or a hunk of spoiled food.

The choir, from a Catholic church in Edmond, sang another selection for the unnamed, unknown, unwanted baby boy. They sang “Isaiah 49.” In Isaiah 49:15, God is assuring the people of Zion that he will not forsake them. “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”

Let us, as well, not forget this child, or any child who dies before its time. God bless you, little one, whoever you might have become.



Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle.