Yes, said the father when he heard that his daughter was dead, thank God because it was better than the other possible reality, and I heard similar from a friend the terrible year his son died sometimes I think at least he’s safe now. I don’t have to worry for him anymore. The impossibility of our children suffering, the incomprehensibility of that thought in our minds, how we cannot live with it, how there are parents who have to, not just in the Middle East but everywhere there is war, starvation, environmental catastrophe, an unsafe home or even the bully at school and off they go to face them. The memory of suffering it evokes in us, of being small and unguarded. The terrific injustice. I didn’t want to write about this today but I woke with those words in my head, yes, when I heard I was glad. And I saw his daughter and I felt the tear of being absolved, no longer had to imagine and be sick with fear, and I imagined my own children missing, location unknown, in hostile hands, bombs falling, guns firing, eyes wide, systems shut down, the shattering terror of it and I understood his yes. When my children were small one of them disappeared from a playground, I hadn’t noticed the second gate, I’d sat by the only one I thought there was, I’d been chatting with a friend and looked up and he was gone, I couldn’t see him. We ran about calling in that escalating way that begins with his name in a sing-song voice and ends with asking strangers frantically, but everyone shook their heads. We widened our search to the park, but which way, it was so big; people, grass, trees but no sight of a five-year-old. The heartbeat began, not the visions yet, they were reserved for when I’d found him, when I saw in the distance a stranger holding the hand of a little boy, walking the path toward me, him toddling along quite happily. I found him on the road she said and I didn’t stop to take her in, hug her, be so grateful for her kindness and observation, a child alone on the pavement, anyone could have stopped and picked him up. I was too fast holding him and watching the flood of other possible realities fill my brain. They still sicken through my blood even though they didn’t happen, I still wonder how I would have lived through them, I walk the corridors of them at night, like the father who cried in relief that death was better.
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Searingly written. I feel the emotions behind this post so powerfully right now. Being a parent is suffering--and joy--but also suffering.
Oh oh oh. To be in such a position to think that. My heart hurts