David McElroy

I lost my friend Charlotte Thursday evening. She was only 7 years old.

When a young feral cat gave birth to four tiny kittens seven years ago, Charlotte looked different from the beginning. It was hard to decide what color to call her. But however you described her, one thing was clear. Among the four little sisters, she was the alpha girl.

Charlotte was tiny but she was fearless. When the other cats would run or hide from unfamiliar things, she would stand her ground, typically looking on with a bored indifference that seemed to be her way of indicating lack of fear. Her only real enemy was the vacuum cleaner.

Before we knew she was a girl, an ex-girlfriend decided this kitten’s facial markings made the eyebrows look like those of a Vulcan from Star Trek, so she was initially known as Mr. Spock.

One of her sisters died very early. In the picture at the bottom of this article, they were about 6 weeks old. The gray one which was second from the left in that photo died shortly after the picture was taken. There was never any warning and I never knew the reason. The vet said it sometimes happens that there is something genetic wrong and it just catches up with them shortly after birth.

The remaining three girls seemed to love books — mostly for sleeping — so they were named for the writing Brontë sisters. As the alpha, the former Mr. Spock became Charlotte, the oldest Brontë sister. The gray one on the right in the photo was named Emily. The black one became Anne. Keep Reading

Emersyn Morris was murdered Saturday, but nobody had to go looking for the killer.

The 4-month-old little girl was killed by her own father — because she was making “baby talk” noises while he tried to watch television. Cory Morris, 21, of Minneapolis faces murder charges after hitting his daughter approximately 15 times in the face with his fist and another seven times on her chest with his fist. (See his photo below.)

Morris was alone with the baby. He had watched her alone many times. But something different happened this time and the baby’s mother — Morris’ girlfriend, Jenny Andersen — is now left grieving the death of her child and pondering the fact that she chose Morris to be her partner and the father of this child.

The most important decision you will ever make for your child is who the other parent will be. Keep Reading

It was just a routine news story. Accidents happen all the time. People are killed all the time. But still….

A plane crashed late Sunday morning in Tuscaloosa County, not far west of Birmingham. Three Mississippi couples were returning to Oxford, Miss., from a dental conference in Florida. Four of the six — including a husband/wife pair — were dental professionals. The plane had engine trouble and radioed the Tuscaloosa Regional Airport that it was going to make an emergency landing — but it crashed violently just short of the airport, leaving no survivors.

The news stories identified the six dead passengers and said they left a total of 11 children behind. Dr. Michael Perry and his wife, nurse Kimberly Perry, had three children. Dr. Austin Poole and his wife, Angie Poole, had five children. Drs. Jason and Lea Farese (in the photo below) had three children. And then I noticed what the story said about the youngest Farese child:

“The youngest just started kindergarten this week.”

For some reason, that hit me hard and it’s left me sitting here in a daze thinking about those 11 children — and somehow it left me thinking again about my own mortality and the uncertainties of life.

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