Unfortunately, for the second time in my adult life, my house was broken into last night. I have to say that all-in-all, things are as good as could be possible in such circumstances. No one was home at the time, they were only in the house for an extremely short period of time, and of what they took, none of it had extreme monetary value.
That being said, there is truly something awful about being burglarized. In this case, the thieves took all of Grace’s jewelry boxes, which contained a few pieces of decently valuable jewelry, but also contained a large variety of keepsakes, photographs and memories. One of the boxes had actually been give to her by her daughter. And there in lies the truly dreadful thing taken by burglars. Not only do they violate that safe space that we think of as home, but they tend to take stuff that has little monetary worth but is completely priceless to the owner. They will end up callously throwing out things that the owner would give up so much to get back. And that makes them what can only best be described as scum.
There may be a desire to feel sorry for the thief because of the desperate set of circumstances that brings a person to be a burglar. However, I think ethically, it is even more important to keep in mind how shabbily they treat their victims. For every house they break into, they make a family’s life a little darker, their world a little less friendly and they strip them of those little things upon which we imprint some of our most cherished memories. And for that, I don’t have much sympathy left.
All that being said, we are well and are putting things back to normal as quickly as possible.