Category: Orphans

Coronavirus Orphans

This could be only the beginning of a new wave of orphans.  Sundee Rutter, 42, complained of feeling unwell on March 3 whilst recovering from surgery and thought she may have COVID-19.

The doctor’s told her she didn’t have it.  However, she self-quarantined at home for four days.  Then, she started having difficulty breathing and was admitted to a Washington hospital on March 7.  After one week of fighting, she passed away on Monday.

Sundee lost her husband some years ago and leaves her six children orphaned.  The six children range in ages from 24, down to 13.  Her children say she made it her highest priority to instill in all of them the highest values.  It was her hope that each of her children will make a positive impact on friends, family, and community.

Due to recently undergoing cancer treatment, Sundee simply didn’t have an immune system capable of pulling her through.  She had beat cancer but lost the battle for continuing her life due to the Coronavirus.

Sadly, I feel we will see more sad stories like this one.  I am heartened that there are two children that are 21+ in age plus one who will be in another year who can take over raising their younger siblings.  Though it is a big burden at such a young age, the children are old enough that they are unlikely to end up adopted or in foster care.

Opioid Orphans

It is so sad that medications meant to relieve serious pain have become such a travesty that people who might benefit from them find it hard to receive a prescription.  I understand the complication.  I have been prescribed such medications and though I never became addicted, I could see the temptation and how the drug fixes itself upon the person.

I have experienced the awareness that my ex-husband overdosed and gratefully survived the experience.  When he came home he told me his friend dumped him out at the emergency room.  Not long after, that friend actually died of an overdose himself.  His family lived next door to my in-laws and they quite obviously, and reasonably, distanced themselves from my ex at the time – though he was not at all responsible for his friend’s death.  Parents have a hard time accepting such a hard truth at the time they lose their child.

Today, many grandparents will be forced to rescue their grandchildren after such an event.  Fortunately, the death I described above was a person without children.  Though perhaps a few years away from retirement, they find themselves full-time parents again.  This is the collateral damage caused by the opioid crisis.

As the opioid epidemic has spread across the country, through all age, gender, race and economic categories, the number of children who have lost their parents to drugs—either to death by overdose, to jail, prison, homelessness or disability—has skyrocketed. Those children wind up in one of two places: either with relatives, or in an already overburdened foster care system.  In 2015, the child welfare system saw a three-year national increase of more than 30,000 children entering foster care.  That number is likely much higher now as the nation finally begins to face the truth and pharmaceutical companies are being held to account.

In West Virginia, the hardest hit state in the opioid crisis, the number of foster care children grew 24 percent from 2012-2016.  The numbers escalate as the number of overdoses increase; they mirror the number of addicts in treatment programs, incarceration or living day-to-day on the streets. Babies are born addicted to opioids or other drugs.  More often than not, addict parents, living or deceased, have made little or no provisions for the ongoing care of their children.