Killed by Her Protector

Seventeen month old Isabella Thamm died this morning at Christus-Schumpert Hospital St. Mary’s Place, according to a hospital spokeswoman. She had been in critical condition since undergoing surgery there Friday night.

Isabella was killed by the one person in the world who should have been the first to give his life for her; her protector, her father.

Her 34 year old father pushed her head into a doorjamb when she wouldn't stop crying.

On a Dead Child

Man proposes, God disposes,

And so I wander'd up to where you lay,

A little rose among the little roses,

And no more dead than they.

It seemed your childish feet were tired of straying,

You did not greet me from your flower-strewn bed,

Yet still I knew that you were only playing--

Playing at being dead.

I might have thought that you were really sleeping,

So quiet lay your eyelids to the sky,

So still your hair, but surely you were peeping;

And so I did not cry.

God knows, and in His proper time disposes,

And so I smiled and gently called your name,

Added my rose to your sweet heap of roses,

And left you to your game.

'On a Dead Child' is reprinted from An Anthology of Modern Verse. Ed. A. Methuen. London: Methuen & Co., 1921.