Precious Cargo

Children are precious cargo. From conception to birth through years of learning and life shaping experiences, they are a great responsibility as well as the source of much joy. A poignant memory for me was my arrival home from the hospital with my first-born daughter. Everyone has Kodak moments in their lives. I vividly remember laying her gently on my bed to change her diaper and being overwhelmed with the enormity of the responsibility of it all. At that moment the thought that raced through my mind was …what I did would determine whether she lived or died. That was a heart stopping, brain exploding moment. I was young, barely eighteen, and the weight of that thought catapulted me into dedicating my every waking moment to giving her everything she would need to grow into the beautiful person she has become.  She was my world, my everything and from the moment she was born I could not envision my life without her, separated from her in any way.

So I find myself quite distraught, heartbroken and tearful imagining the suffering and pain that the parents must feel when they are separated from their children not knowing where they are, who might be comforting them or even if their basic needs are being met. What has America become when we are engaging in practices such as this, practices employed by Nazi Germany when families were torn apart and endured unspeakable atrocities and millions were gassed and burned in ovens, disposed of as trash. This didn’t happen over night. The steps to death, destruction, loss of freedoms are small ones. But cumulatively, they are earth shattering, life altering cataclysmic events.

Photographs taken by British troops on their arrival at Belsen concentration camp Photo: The Holocaust Centre

History will not be kind to the people who support this diabolical plan. Just as there were no excuses for following orders in Nazi Germany, if one doesn’t protest this inhumane practice, then you are part of the problem and as such will bear the same guilt when history comes calling. Silence is complicity! And there is a special place in Hell for the creators and enforcers of this horrible tRump policy.

Hug your children!