Tuesday, July 10, 2012

"Cruelest of seas"

Here's another tragic story published in the DailyRecord.co.uk, July 4, 2012 by James Moncurwith a long headline: "Mum tormented by son's drowning says she wishes she jumped into water with him."

THE MOTHER of a little boy who drowned after a wave swept him off a seafront has revealed how his death still haunts her.

Jadwiga Serafin fought back tears yesterday as she recalled how she was stopped from jumping in to try to rescue her son.

She says she still wishes she had tried to get to three-year-old Eryk Cieraszewski – even though she could have lost her own life.

And vile internet trolls have almost driven her to suicide by branding her a bad mother in the months after his death.

Eryk was washed through a sea wall from the Esplanade in Kirkcaldy, Fife, into the freezing Firth of Forth.

He was unresponsive by the time he was plucked from the sea and dead by the time he reached hospital, despite heroic efforts by firefighters and lifeboatmen.

Last night, single mum Jadwiga, 28, who came to Fife from Poland in 2006, said the only thing which kept her alive was her five-year-old daughter, Oliwia, who witnessed Eryk’s death.

She described how the tragedy unfolded after she took Eryk and Oliwia for a walk on the seafront on a Saturday afternoon last November.

She said: “Eryk and Oliwia were splashing in puddles, about two metres from the break in the wall. I took my camera out to take a picture and a big wave came over and took him away.

“I couldn’t believe it. I went into shock. I started screaming but I was so panicked that I could only speak in Polish.

“People couldn’t understand so I went down the stairs myself. I waded in, up to my waist. I could hear Oliwia crying for me to stay with her.

“I looked and looked but I couldn’t see Eryk so I came back up. I was running along the promenade when I saw him in the water.

“I started pointing and I went to jump in but some people held me back. Oliwia was crying out, ‘Don’t leave me, mummy, don’t leave me.’”

Police described the death as “a tragic accident” but Jadwiga blames herself.

She said: “People talk about me on the internet. They say it’s my fault, that I’m a bad mother and that I’m stupid.

“When I wake up in the morning, I feel like I want to die. But I have to stay strong for Oliwia.”

Seven months on from the tragedy, Oliwia refuses to accept that her brother is gone.

Jadwiga said: “When she goes to school in the morning she tells me Eryk should be coming. Sometimes she won’t leave. She waits for him.”

Jadwiga is now urging Fife Council to bring forward £9million plans to close the deadly gaps in the sea wall before another tragedy.
She said: “This place is very dangerous so I hope they do it quickly. It’s very important for other families.


“It’s the only way to avoid this kind of accident happening again, because the water doesn’t have to be strong. I don’t want another mother to have to feel the way I do.”

I thought it would be better ib this case to copy down the whole original article here. I think the article was not only report a very tragic news item, it may also shared the young mum's agony and trying to convey a message and I share them too.  It is something tragic that should not ever happen but had really happened. The least that we can do is to see to it that it will not happen again. The important point is what indicated in the article: the wave that causing it happen was not necessarily very large, but just enough to swept the little boy out to make such an event the "cruelest of seas" as the next commentary characterizes it:

She is not to blame
By Joan Burnie
OF course Jadwiga did absolutely nothing wrong.
She was treating both her kids to a lovely day out, letting them have fun, splashing around in the puddles, as children love to do. In short, being a good mum.
That everything should have ended so tragically that day is not her fault.
But no matter how often anyone assures Jadwiga that she was helpless against the power of that cruelest of seas, a bit of her will always believe that, somehow, she could have saved Eryk.
How can she not?
He was her son. He died.
She will never get over it but if the grief never lessens, I hope the guilt does.
Because she is not to blame and no one should dare suggest she is.
There, but for the grace of God, goes every parent.

Now this is a very good relevant, sympathetic, and understandable commentary on the tragic Mum's case. Of course she is not to blame.  As fade has it, it all because a wave swept her son off a seafront into the sea.  Similar thing must have happened countless times at countless places around the world -- and we are so helpless to do anything about it!  I am wondering how do the academic research scientists feel when they merged in their ivory tower study of intriguing nonlinear equations about the sea . . . ? 

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