Sad

So, this morning I was watching “The Morning Show” on the local Fox affiliate and I saw one of the saddest features I’ve ever seen. Sad, not because of what was going on, but because of why it had to exist and what it said about the current state of things.

The feature began with a 17 year old whiz-kid who is currently a college jr. studying aerospace engineering. This is not sad and not why he was on the show. The reason for his appearance was that he came up with a website for finding unknown half-siblings for people who need donors for various organs, etc. Again, on the surface this is not sad. Sure, it is unfortunate that organs fail and people suffer while looking for donors, but this is part of living in a fallen world and the very fact that we can transplant organs is reason to celebrate.

Even the website itself was not in itself sad. It is a great idea, one that could help many people. There are reasons why people may be estranged from their half-siblings that have different degrees of sadness related to them. Couples who have turned to artificial insemination for one reason or another may raise children with half-siblings that they never know. Children who came through the adoption system for any one of a number of reasons may have half-sisters or half-brothers (or full-blown sisters or brothers) that they never had the chance to meet.

What was sad about this feature in particular was the cheerful reunion that they hosted on the show. The audience was introduced to a family consisting of a mother and her two children, a girl and her big brother. They were raised never really knowing the “man” (I use the term purely in a biological sense) who impregnated their mother. Through the use of this website the teenagers discovered that they had two other half-siblings, one living in Delaware, the other in Ohio.

Oh, happy day! New brothers and sisters!

Here’s the rub, mom didn’t know either. And the new sibs were just about the same age as the two teens. Again, we turn to the “man” who was not present on set, not talked about and not present in the lives of any of these teens. Sad. What kind of a world is it where a “man” can act in such a way as to leave offspring scattered across several states, from three different women in a relatively short amount of time without any of them knowing each other? How can someone completely disengage from their own progeny to such a degree that they don’t even keep in touch with their mother - that they don’t even know that there are other children in the situation? Furthermore, what does it say to a child who has to turn to a website to find out if they really have brothers and sisters that their parents haven’t told them about? You want these kids to trust their parents (or anyone) when this bombshell drops on them? Sad.