The Biden Pardon is a Test of our Empathy
“When I have kids, I’m not gonna….”
It’s the phrase we hear when we decide we’re going to ‘do better’ than whoever we’re watching.
Let’s apply that to Joe Biden:
When I am 82 years old, and I’ve buried my wife, a baby daughter, and one son, and my other son is facing up to 17 years in prison after being in a severe car crash as a child that killed his mother and sister, sustaining traumatic brain injuries, recovering, losing his brother, and struggling with addiction his whole adult life…
I won’t pardon him so I can spend my last years with him instead of visiting him on prison visit days.
Do we really think we wouldn’t if we had the power?
I’m not passing judgment on whether, in an abstract world, it’s the right thing to do, but do we think we wouldn’t?
In 2023, I lost my middle son. One day we were texting about our favorite songs and the gardens I planted when he was little, and then the next week, I was curled up next to him, listening to the whir of a ventilator. Like Hunter Biden, he had struggled with addiction, had made terrible choices. But even today, I still watch the videos of him dancing with his special needs brother and singing Christmas carols. He contained multitudes.
I know a little about how losing a child changes you, how it changes how you parent your remaining children, your sense of the preciousness of time, how you hang on to the good moments, even if they’re mixed with terrible ones.
Like the Biden family, addiction and the justice system have been interwoven in our journey as my two older sons struggled with trauma from terrible events and I struggled with the boundaries of both love and accountability.
Unlike Biden, I am not 82 years old and thankfully, in some ways, I don’t have the power to pardon my son.
Because frankly, if I did, if I asked myself in all honesty… I probably would.
And until you’ve been there, until you’ve buried your children and then walked the tightrope of hope and boundaries that loving a child who struggles with addiction takes, I think it’s a lie for you to say you wouldn’t.
