Did you ever?
Did you ever find yourself in one place and needing to, wanting to, get to someone who was not well, but there were oceans and countries between you, not to mention government regulations?
I was talking to someone today and she asked me this—she was talking about an elderly relative who lived in her native country. I had just told her about how, a few years ago, Charlie cried and twisted and screamed in my arms atop a manhole cover on a train platform, and of how a literal half-circle of onlookers stared or tried not to, and of how I had just wanted to get Charlie back home. I had told her this to explain something about how that experience, and many more like it, had left me feeling puzzled, stuck, helpless, desperate—–and, as I later reflected once Charlie was safely tucked into his bed in our old house, determined to find some way to change things, to change stares and fear into understanding and connection.
The person whom I was talking too was wiping tears from her eyes as she told me, she has not been back to her native country for some years and that when she does, she will still be expecting to see her elderly relative, who has passed on, there. And then we talked about what could be done—-what she could try to do someday—-that might have made it possible to see him once more, safe at home.
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POSTED IN: Family, Parenting, Philosophy
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