From over at Ann’s place.
https://tinyurl.com/yhk3jnmw

===================

On September 8, ARSH 2008 Thomas Vander Woude, aged 66, was working in his back yard with his seventh and youngest child, Joseph. “Josie” was 20 years old at the time, and did everything with his Dad. Josie was born with Down Syndrome. After finishing up cleaning the family’s swimming pool, Josie walked through the back yard toward his Dad who was also doing yard work. When Josie stepped on the 2X2 foot cover of their septic tank, the cover collapsed and Josie fell into the nearly-full, eight-foot deep tank. Thomas saw this and immediately ran over to the tank. He tried to pull the panicked Josie out, but couldn’t. Thomas Vander Woude then slipped himself into the septic tank to help his son. A workman who was at their house at the time saw what happened and told Mrs. Vander Woude who called 911 immediately. Both the workman and Mrs. Vander Woude then ran outside to help. Thomas was in the tank, treading the sewage, trying to lift Josie up so that the workman and his wife could get a grasp on him and lift him out. It wasn’t working.
Thomas Vander Woude then made the decision to take his last breath on this earth, dove under the surface of the sewage and pinned himself under his son so that Josie’s head was above the surface and he could breathe until the rescue crews arrived. Thomas Vander Woude drowned, without struggling, in human sewage saving the life of his developmentally disabled son. His last moments were in the total blackness of the bottom of a septic tank, with a combination of urine, feces and wastewater rushing into his mouth, down his windpipe and into his lungs. I am hard-pressed to imagine a more physically filthy demise. Or a more terribly beautiful one. The tears that are welling up in your eyes right about now are the proof of that.