Mom Comes Under Fire For Tweeting Son's Death
Shelli Ross is a military wife and mom, a popular blogger and an avid user of Twitter. Now she is also a grieving parent. Ross' son Bryson, 2, drowned in a pool on December 14th.
According to accounts of the story, Mrs. Ross had tweeted just prior to finding her son at the bottom of the pool and shortly after he died. The details in between are a bit sketchy, but from what I could tell Shelli called 911 and performed CPR in an attempt to save her son. The Twitterverse and the blogosphere are fickle worlds and one can never predict how they will react to almost any situation. Those in Ross' Twitter circle rallied around the grief-stricken mom, but others were quick to criticize her actions, and even went so far as to blame her constant tweeting for her son's death.
To be fair, the thought crossed my mind after reading this inflammatory blog post.
However, after some consideration and soul-searching for how I'd feel were that me and one of my precious children, I'd can't say how I'd react, or if my actions would be deemed appropriate. I am a blogger, my job is to write, and I spend a lot of time at the computer. Fortunately, my children are old enough to be in school most of the work day, but there were times when they were little I simply did not see everything they were doing while I was blogging/working. And there will assuredly be moments in the future when this is the case. What's that they say about casting stones?
Even more surprising, were the mostly tempered responses from the otherwise acerbic readers at Gawker, who I would have expected to assail this mother with every kind of wicked reprisal. I'd say the most salient observation about the precariousness of this story was stated by Gawker reader RandomLunatic:
"The police have defended this woman. She's a military mom with a husband overseas. Her Twitter followers probably do feel like family to her - which is sad in and of itself. It certainly seemed weird at first blush, but the story makes more sense the more you read about it.
As a parent, would I do it? HELL no. I'd probably be unable to move, even breathe. Still, you really can't predict how people will handle grief, so it's kind of unfair to judge them for it, unless there seems to be a question as to how the cause of the grief came about. There doesn't appear to be any of that here, just a tragic accident that could happen to a LOT of perfectly decent parents, Twitter accts or not."Continued on the next page
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