Carol Marin: Who would care for her girl when she died?

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A mother kills her daughter.

It violates everything we believe in.

And yet, here is Bonnie Liltz, 55, of Schaumburg.

Friends call her kind, caring and devoted to Courtney, 28, whom she adopted after that lovely, catastrophically disabled child had already been given up by her birth mother and then by her first adoptive family.

Bonnie, doing volunteer work at a suburban residence for the disabled, took the child home when she was 5. “She kept Courtney clean, well-dressed, well-nourished,” said her attorney Thomas Glasgow. “She took immaculate, impeccable care.”

In truth, both mother and child were 100 percent disabled. At 19, Bonnie survived ovarian cancer but radiation treatments so ravaged her bladder and bowels that she has, ever since, been severely incontinent. But when people saw her, said her friend Sue Smith, they saw “a woman who was beautiful, tall, willowy, super-intelligent . . . with a heart as big as the universe . . . whose daughter was her life.”

OPINION

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Sue, also the mother of a disabled adult daughter, and Bonnie shared their fears.

What would happen to their girls when they died? Who would love them, lift them, diaper them, feed them, treat them with dignity after they were gone?

As the mom of a profoundly disabled son, I know those fears.

In 2012, Bonnie had a recurrence of cancer. And Courtney had to stay in an emergency residential setting until her mother recovered. It was not a good place and Courtney, said Glasgow, “came home a different kid. . . . It devastated Bonnie.”

Sue and Bonnie were both in the process of making application to a suburban residential center they felt would provide quality care. “But all these places have waiting lists,” said Sue.

Currently there are 22,000 developmentally disabled people on various waiting lists in Illinois, according to Veronica Vera of the Department of Human Services. And 7,000 waiting for residential placement. Yet, in Springfield, lawmakers and the governor are debating $33 million in cuts to those services.

“Bonnie wrote a letter to the governor,” said Sue, “asking him to reconsider.”

On the night she gave Courtney and herself an overdose of medication and wrote a suicide note, Bonnie was experiencing her worst attack yet of gastric pain and horrific diarrhea. She thought she was dying.

“She was in a desperate phase of her life,” said her attorney. “This was not a cry for help. This was a person who was at the end of her options in taking care of her daughter and herself.”

On May 27, Schaumburg police found both at home and unconscious. Courtney did not survive.  Bonnie did.

Glasgow credits police and prosecutors for their professionalism and compassion. The charge, nonetheless, is murder.

“I’ve never seen a case like this,” he told me.

Strangers are calling his office offering bond money and support and speaking of their own struggles as caregivers.

Sue Smith wrote a letter to the court.

“Your honor,” she wrote, “something happened to my friend that night. This was not something she planned to do.”

Sacredness of life?

What about quality of life?

Bonnie Liltz is a window to a world we fail to see.

Or adequately serve.

Follow Carol Marin on Twitter: @CarolMarin

Email: CarolMarin@aol.com

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