Forgotten Stories

There’s a story we’ve forgotten about, I think. It’s easy to forget stories that are silenced by circumstance and hidden by shame. Just like it’s easy to remember stories that make us happy.

No one wants to talk about kids who kill themselves (or each other). It’s uncomfortable stuff – not the kind of conversation that flows easily around most dinner tables. Do you have a dinner table? Many people – tonight – will have neither a dinner nor a table. I told you it was uncomfortable stuff.

No one wants to talk about the children who get lost in the system. It’s hard not to cry when you are sitting next to three teenage boys, on a water break during a basketball game, and the conversation turns from who has the best jump shot to when they think their parents are going to get out of jail. They don’t cry. At least not on the basketball court.

Unless they are five-years-old, not able to decipher the difference between their friends running to the other side of the court with the basketball and their mothers running away from them. You could tell them that, most likely, their mothers are running away from themselves, not their children. But they are five-years-old. And they might not understand. Or they might. But what you come to understand in that moment is that five-year-olds can cry on basketball courts for reasons that have nothing to do with skinning their knees.

So often we do not want to think about the forgotten stories – but when these stories are our children, I think the urgency to act should fill some sort of need in us. To be human. To be connected to each other. To be compassionate.

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