I continue to read newspaper stories about young people who have died .Whatever age ,sex, race, religion they are ,I feel the deepest pain and despair for their loss of life and their family’s anguish . I remember in the weeks after Rosie died ,there was a lot of news coverage of atrocities in The Gaza Strip .There was one film of a father picking up his dead child from the rubble and just holding him close and sobbing – it broke another piece off my already broken heart .I wept for that family. I also marvel at how articulate some bereaved parents are ,saying stuff I feel ,but just quite can’t put into words .Yesterday I read about Cindy Corrie ,whose 23 yr old daughter Rachel ,was killed in Gaza ( just a coincidence to my reference earlier ).These are a few snippets of stuff she wrote that resonated with me
After hearing her daughter had died – ”the worst moment of my life .I stumbled through the following, hours ,days and weeks, feeling physically ill. I couldn’t sleep, I would drift off and then feel jolts of pain through my arms.And then there was that thing of going to sleep and then waking up and finding that it isn’t a nightmare but it’s real and it’s always there every day .
The loss the void is permanent.You feel it every day of your life.What happened to Rachel will never be OK .All you ever do is take the next breadth and the next step. I’m still just taking the next step, but you get to the point where it’s OK to do that”