I view the young women I care for through the prism of parenthood, examining them first as a father and then as a physician. That perspective has made me better at both jobs and in a way, brought me around to seeing your daughters as my own. For that reason, the recent murder of Holly Boutilier in Bangor weighs heavily on my heart, and I cannot let her passing pass without comment.
We all lose something special when we lose a young woman. We lose someone whose nature is often to nurture, someone interested in improving the lives and well-being of those around her. We lose someone who often magnifies the best of what the world has to offer to those smart enough to see it even briefly through her eyes: love, art, beauty, kindness, community, capacity to keep caring beyond reason, and much more. We lose someone whose perspective takes some of the hard edges off a hard world.
We also lose a small piece of our piece of mind when we lose yet another Holly to violence. It is impossible to know young women walking around in this world without fearing for their safety and their future, even in a country as relatively safe as this one. When one of my daughters calls me while walking home from college or the hospital, I want them to stay on the phone with me until they are safe behind a locked door. I want them to have their Mace in one hand and a machine gun in the other at all times.
Even a young woman armed to the teeth is not safe, however, because sometimes it is the violent man they live with, rather than the violent man in the shadows, who is the real threat. As a father, that fact leaves me feeling something fathers hate to feel — unable to protect our families. As a community, it means we cannot protect our own children. For anyone who really thinks about it then, whether as a parent or as a community, we cannot lose Hollys without losing some of our self-respect.
The constant loss of young women to acts of violence is an unwelcome reminder that at its best, this is an imperfect world, and at its worst, it can be a terrible place. In Somalia, that may not seem like a paradox. In beautiful Maine, it does; the state millions of tourists travel to visit somehow should not have dark places under a bridge where young women are killed.
It is a stark reminder to me of the Maine that is not the way life should be, that lives just beyond the beautiful coast, just around the corner from the nice hotels, and just off the paths that slick brochures tell us to take. It is a reminder to me that part of what passes for quaint and rural in Maine is poverty; we are sometimes too poor to have new things. When Holly looks at me from the pages of the newspaper with those big eyes behind those bigger glasses, my denial that Maine is somehow different gets peeled off like cheap paint poorly applied.
I doubt Holly would let me dwell in these doldrums, however. She would probably tell me the best way to remember her would be to look around me to the other young women I know and find again the color and sun they bring to my world. She would remind me, perhaps, that no one says more about the importance of optimism than a young woman who leafs through Brides magazine planning her far-off wedding. No one, she might add, says more about the enduring beauty of a sometimes cruel world than a young woman who sees the world through the artist’s eyes. And finally, she might say, if you want your optimism restored after the loss of a young woman, talk to the young women you know, and she would be right.
And I would say even those of us who never knew you miss you, Holly. Rest in peace.
Erik Steele, D.O., a physician in Bangor, is chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region. He is also the interim CEO at Blue Hill Memorial Hospital.