Like millions of Americans watching Rachel Maddow last night, I listened to the audio of detained immigrant children being warehoused in Texas. I heard the cries, the desperation, and I heard the lies being told to them by Agents, and I wept. Jesus how I wept. I’m a mother, so the urge to reach through the television and comfort that child was primal. Not to be able to do so was excruciating. I cried, and convulsed, and pounded the couch. I closed my eyes tight like a child hoping the horror will some how go away or lessen by that act. It did not. It took a long time to recover, and I had help.
Did you feel it too? I know I wasn’t the only one. Did it tear something in you? I’ve been here, in a sense, before, powerless to save a child’s life.
He was my son. Just before his third birthday, he was diagnosed with a very rare leukemia, one that would require a bone marrow transplant for any hope of a cure. After five months of brutal chemotherapy treatments and a bone marrow transplant, his cancer returned, and despite the best care in the world, he died. I watched my son die, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
I couldn’t save him, but I could comfort him, snuggle, lay with him, sing to him, read a book, tell a joke, watch a video, rock, dance, hold hands, any measure of comfort I could think of. I could lessen his terror and suffering simply by being there with him, holding him, assuring him he was going to be okay, because I had to do those things, and because he needed me to.
He wasn’t ripped out of my arms by human enemies, but by a bastardmotherfucker of a disease. For the months he was living in the hospital, I lived in abject terror, powerless to save him. I had to hand him over to the care of others who poked and prodded and worse. They did so lovingly and out of necessity, but still, to relinquish the care of one’s child to a stranger is terrifying even when they are loving, skilled professionals.
His death nearly destroyed me emotionally, physically, and spiritually, yet here I am five years later with a daughter about to turn three. That fact alone is enough to put me on edge emotionally—she’s at the developmental stage he was at diagnosis. Now I’m faced with the truth that our country has its own bastardmotherfucker of a disease, and it’s taking more children away from their parents, more moms and dads away from their precious kids. This pain, this PTSD if you will, has galvanized me to one end: get these kids back to their parents. Whatever it takes.
What, do some people really think they love their kids more fiercely than we love ours? Imagine. Try. What if this was you? Your kids? Let’s assume you are reading this because you too are heartbroken and desperate to do something. What can we do? I offer a simple homework assignment: Write something about one of these kids or families, just one. It’s hard for people to wrap their heads around thousands and thousands of kids being imprisoned. The mind simply cannot accept it, so it turns away.
Before my son, “Kids with Cancer” was an unimaginable number of bald heads and IV’s and sad piano music in the background. I tell my son’s story to make it real, because when people get to know all the quirky cool things about him, like his love of cooking and Jack Johnson, or how he played with medical supplies in the hospital, that scary blob starts to come into focus. He was a real boy with real parents who fought like hell to save him. Who wouldn’t do everything they could to save such an amazing, beautiful child? People related to my son and my family on a personal level. They related to the primal instinct decent humans share in common: the urgency to protect our young. Some people became transformed by the story, inspired to pursue certain areas of work or volunteer at children’s hospitals where the beautiful baldies are plentiful.
Maybe you can tell a story about one of these children or one of these parents and stir the same thing in others. You can send the personal stories to your local newspapers, so for those who don’t watch Rachel Maddow can read the story of the little girl who memorized her auntie’s telephone number, or the man separated from his 12 year old daughter. Humanize them. Take away the racists’ weapon of dehumanizing minorities by turning them into numbers. They have names, parents, faces, and stories. These folks can’t tell the stories themselves. We can, though, and we must.
Thanks for reading. Now go do your homework!