by Suzanne Bowdey, Washington Stand
There are only two families on earth who understand the truly nightmarish pain of September 10. While Charlie Kirk’s wife, children, and parents bear an unspeakable grief, made all the more gut-wrenching by the violent and public way he died, there’s a couple in Utah living with another kind of anguish — the unimaginable suffering that comes when your son is responsible.
No one raises a child thinking they’ll be a killer. Like the rest of the world, Matt and Amber Robinson were probably horrified at the news of Charlie’s assassination. They must have reeled from the footage with the same revulsion and disbelief as tens of millions of Americans who were stunned at the savage way his bright light was snuffed out. And like any mom and dad of three good sons, it would have never crossed their minds that this massive manhunt would lead straight to their door.
Those were the blissful hours when the Robinsons didn’t know life was about to change; when they didn’t realize that the family they’d built was about to come crashing down. These were the moments before reporters were on their lawns, before their happy Facebook photos became headline news, before sirens showed up to take the first child they’d held in their arms away.
Parents across human history have had to walk the excruciating path of losing children, but very few have lost them this way. It’s a small club of moms and dads who know the shame and despair that a tragedy of this magnitude costs you. When it’s your own flesh and blood that the world reviles, when the little boy you taught to ride a bike and whose straight A’s you celebrated is the villain in a horror movie you never dreamed would be written, the questions screaming through a parent’s head must be a unique kind of torture. Where did we go wrong? What did we miss? Why us?There are only two families on earth who understand the truly nightmarish pain of September 10. While Charlie Kirk’s wife, children, and parents bear an unspeakable grief, made all the more gut-wrenching by the violent and public way he died, there’s a couple in Utah living with another kind of anguish — the unimaginable suffering that comes when your son is responsible.
No one raises a child thinking they’ll be a killer. Like the rest of the world, Matt and Amber Robinson were probably horrified at the news of Charlie’s assassination. They must have reeled from the footage with the same revulsion and disbelief as tens of millions of Americans who were stunned at the savage way his bright light was snuffed out. And like any mom and dad of three good sons, it would have never crossed their minds that this massive manhunt would lead straight to their door.
Those were the blissful hours when the Robinsons didn’t know life was about to change; when they didn’t realize that the family they’d built was about to come crashing down. These were the moments before reporters were on their lawns, before their happy Facebook photos became headline news, before sirens showed up to take the first child they’d held in their arms away.
Parents across human history have had to walk the excruciating path of losing children, but very few have lost them this way. It’s a small club of moms and dads who know the shame and despair that a tragedy of this magnitude costs you. When it’s your own flesh and blood that the world reviles, when the little boy you taught to ride a bike and whose straight A’s you celebrated is the villain in a horror movie you never dreamed would be written, the questions screaming through a parent’s head must be a unique kind of torture. Where did we go wrong? What did we miss? Why us?