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In December 2022, a boy was fatally injured by a truck at Escher-Wyss-Platz. Now the mother is speaking out for the first time.
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- In December 2022, a boy was fatally injured by a truck at Escher-Wyss-Platz.
- Now the mother speaks out for the first time.
Susanne Schmetkamp will never forget the moment she received the news of the death of her little son Tony. “I just screamed. I screamed for a very, very, very long time,” she says on the SRF program “Sternstunde der Nacht”. Tony, not even six years old, was hit by a truck on his way to kindergarten shortly before Christmas 2022 and fatally injured.
The accident caused widespread shock and changed the woman’s life forever. Schmetkamp, a philosopher and ethicist, was suddenly caught in the reality of a mother who had the most precious thing taken away from her.
“It felt like a part of your heart was being ripped out of your body,” is how Schmetkamp describes the agony she experienced when she arrived at the scene of the accident. In the days and weeks that followed, her life was divided into two different realities. On the one hand, everyday life seemed to carry on in an orderly fashion, while on the other, there was a paralyzing standstill. “You live in different times and realities,” she explains in a conversation with philosopher Barbara Bleisch.
Grief is omnipresent
Tony is not the first child Schmetkamp has lost. Eleven years ago, she experienced the loss of a newborn who died just one day after birth. The death of her father, when she was only 13 years old, also left a deep mark on her life.
But the loss of a child that you love unconditionally and are responsible for protecting is an unbearable burden that shakes your own identity. “It is as if the child you were physically connected to was taken out of your body again. But not to live, but to die,” she describes the pain.
Today, a year and a half after Tony’s death, the grief is still omnipresent. “I don’t even want to say ‘still’, because it may always be like this,” says Schmetkamp quietly. She has learned to work again and look after her family, but the despair remains. Getting over the loss is impossible. “You can’t get over such intrusions of fate. You can only cope with them, if at all.”
