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RSS kadiprescott, Comedy

I returned home, July fourth, to find a disturbing…no, horrifying comment on one of my blogs. It informed me that a fellow Supernanny parent, had committed suicide. My heart sank into my stomach, as I read words that could not, in my mind, be possible. I had seem Scott Terrill’s episode of Supernanny. He seemed like a loving father who, despite divorce, was striving to create a steady, stuctured home life for his two sons. I was guilty, like every other American television viewer, of taking an image from a reality show and pasting it into my “This is who he is” file. Knowing damn well that forty three minutes of a reality show is no where near sufficient footage of a person’s life, to create a complete portrait of who they are. It is like looking at a square inch of a photograph and trying to fill in the rest, based on that miniscule amount of detail provided. It just isn’t enough.

Scott was much more than the man we saw on television. He was the wonderful father that Jo came to help. He was the destroyed soul that sought to pick up the pieces of a hurtful divorce. But he was even more than that. This is an article that I found today. It wrenched my heart, much like that comment on my blog did, on July fourth. It is painful to picture a man who tried so deperately to make a better life for his broken family, come to the point where life was no longer worth living. I cannot imagine being in his shoes. It was a piece of Scott’s life portrait that I never wanted to see painted. A tragic end to a beautiful, yet troubled exsistence.

I mourn his loss, not beacause I knew him personally, but because I understand the struggle to provide a childhood devoid of pain and anguish, for your kids. I know the desperation of picking up the phone to call on a stranger for help. I know the humility that sharing your small fraction of shortcomings with the world, for the sake of better parenting, can bring. In the end, Scott expressed this sentiment to a friend, a few days prior to his death, ‘At least they will have a good step dad.’ Did he feel that he failed his sons? Did his struggles become too overwhelming? Did the pain that his back injury caused, overpower his will to live? We can only imagine what was going through his troubled mind when he decided that death was the answer.

In reality, we got to know one small piece of the man Scott was. This sad ending serves as a reminder that we will never know what our friends, acquaintances and television personalities are truly enduring, behind closed doors. The best thing that we can do as fellow human beings, is to treat each and every person with compassion. After all, it is how we want to be treated and it may just save someone from the same horrible fate. May your soul rest in peace, Scott.

July 8, 2008 |


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4 Comments so far

  1. avatar
    Bonnie    , Sales/Marketing July 9, 2008 6:17 am   

    Very, very sad…. We sometimes forget that the participants on these shows are real people with real problems and we are not privy to the whole story.

    Thanks for sharing what must be a difficult post to write.

  2. avatar
    tenakim    , Moms July 9, 2008 7:58 am   

    Having seen that episode, it really is heart-wrenching!


  3. Half-Past Kissin' Time July 9, 2008 10:09 am   

    Makes you think about the power of words; a kind word, an encouraging comment. What a sad story…

  4. avatar
    sjoukes    , Women July 9, 2008 1:49 pm   

    all too often you hear of a suicide that even the people closest to them have not an inkling of what they are thinking to do..so sad..

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