We are all deeply affected by the inhuman separation of children from parents at the US border.
In solidarity with those parents and to give them voice where they may not have been able to speak, I want to share my own experience. The circumstances were different for me and my two children, but we all have similar feelings of loss regardless of culture, language, or who takes our children. This happened long ago but that separation has marked all our lives.
Namaste!
“The door creaked open onto the darkened bedroom as the two little sisters huddled together in the doorway. One of them toddled towards the sleeping figure “Mama, I had a bad dream!”
I roll over and stretch out my arms to enfold her shivering little body and to draw her and her sister into my warm bed. My arms closed on – nothing – and I awoke with a start. As I groggily look around the room, at the closed door, my brain desperately sorts out dream from reality. With reality comes despair; despair that colors every day a bad dream. To the lonely sound of the fog horn out in the Bay, I prepare to get up and endure another day without them.
Each day stretches out into a grey landscape that I numbly navigate; I move through my life like a ghost, staring out at a world I no longer recognize – solid cement steps seethe like ants nests, the ground in the park heaves with the sobs passing through that possess more power than my small body can contain. Only the sound of children’s voices piece the blanket that grief has thrown over me as it guides me towards the edge. Each day feeling a little more dissolved, I wish that I could finish it and go completely mad.
Other days I walk and walk, trying to exhaust myself so I can sleep dreamlessly and forget for a short time, but every where I go the city is inscribed with the stories of our lives. The place where we held a 3rd birthday party just a few weeks before they disappeared, the merry-go-round that they loved to ride, screaming and laughing with joy, everything has changed.
Now the music that had invited us for rides, curls around me and pulls me to the edge, but I cannot make myself go over, cannot tumble down into oblivion, even though my whole being yearns for it. There is no escape! Instead some hard, unyielding rock at my core forces me to go on, placing one foot in front of the other, feeling the wind blowing through the emptiness that had been my heart, as surely as the breeze moves the hair around my face.
Sometimes I hear a child’s voice calling “Mo-hom” and certain that it is C, I turn in reply– to nothing; I feel S lean against me and begin to slide my arm around – nothing. A bad, unending dream!
Before, I used to play a little head-game as a sort of insurance against or preparation for the trials that life can bring. I would ask myself, what would be the worst thing that could possibly happen. Always the answer “to lose my children!”
And now the worst has happened.”
Thank you for reading
I wish I knew who had written the following:
“Do not be Daunted
By the enormity
Of the World’s grief.
Do justly–Now!
Love Mercy –Now!
Walk Humbly–Now!
You are not obligated
To complete the work,
But neither are you
Free to abandon it!”