Let's love them for a minute. They've fallen asleep and they silent, inhaling and exhaling. That furrowed brow is smooth and those rosy cheeks are edible and the world stops long enough so you can inhale and exhale their scent and the sheer weight of your love for them. For a small moment they are safe and untouchable from the worlds pain
But just for a very small moment these days because the world has grown teeth and become vicious and all of a sudden there are million reasons you can't watch your children sleep... or even touch them
Can you remember their scent? I remember the scent of my children until I forget and then I'm fighting a loud war of silent pain because they're so far away and I want to collapse with grief, yet I cant grieve because they're safe and happy and even though they long to come home the world is holding them, protecting them. I'm always praying and begging other countries to mind them, the precious gifts I've lent to other places, the precious gifts I need protected
And then I see Mammy and Daddy in the 1980s just simply living, furrowed brows thanks to children breaking their hearts and the bank, worrying while us children sleep unworried. I see Daddy driving us to school at 5 mile an hour and us mortified as what felt like 20 children were piled into the car and we look out the rear window at Mammy waving us off, Mammy looks tired....
And Daddy gets us to school after a journey that felt like 4 hours and we pile out desperate to escape and we look back and Daddy looks tired...
Looking back we spent our childhood like we looked as we slept forever safe. Unfurrowed, unworried and safe in the knowledge we were protected
Today Mammy and Daddy are gone and I now drift between waves of longing for them and grateful I dont have to see them through a window, at a distance unable to touch them, unable to hold them or watch them sleep, silent as the world stops for a minute
Today I am a Mammy living with a Daddy who hasn't seen their children in 7 months because a virus has taken over our job of protecting those we love and those we love are relying on us to protect ourselves so that we can see them soon to inhale and exhale them
For every parent locked behind a window, every child wondering why human contact is so forbidden, for every human dying because their mind is killing them, every human choked by loneliness I pray... for every parent who can't feel their arms around their children for a silent minute I pray, for humanity I pray because when everything is lost we will have nothing. It will be too late for blame, too late to wonder what we could have done. Time will have run out....
The sad thing is we dont realise that we still have time... for love, for touch, for survival....
And for every Mammy and daddy still living to get that one damned hug, for every child that assumes a hug is their god given right I will forever pray tomorrow is better...
We still have time to find time again....
We still have time
Dont wait until al we have to remember is that we had time...
Valerie Masters
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