My Children

 
It does no good to cry, or feel bad.  No one benefits from that and yet how can I help it?

I opened my Internet today to read that a Somali woman lost four of her five children in less than 24 hours and only has one daughter left.

She did not lose them to an accident, or a disease.  She did not lose them to bullets, or ax murderers.

She watched them starve to death slowly right before her eyes and then she and her husband buried them as they struggled to reach a place where they might get help.  They took them to a closer place, but they could not afford the treatment there.

I think of my own children when they were tiny.  I think of my grandchildren, of whom two are five and one and I think how unbearable this is.  How does one stay sane watching your children die this way?

Our country is headed this way.  Some day we too will be able to turn dying children away because they lack the price of medicine and food.  Some are already in this position, but there is no reason for it to exist anywhere in the world.

For one child to die from starvation is a mark against all mankind.  We are such a primitive species.

It is natural to protect my own children first, but it is civilized to understand that all children belong to me.