The Chicago hospital is gone. Battered by the dangling iron wrecking ball, crushed and carted gone. Till all that remains are the shimmering waves of dirty gray heat, like a south Texas sun beating down right this moment on a converted Walmart store where America now stores children in aisles of shame and empty boxes filled with lost souls and stacked to the ceiling where the fans have stopped moving air and the kids have all cried every tear dry.
The Chicago Hospital, Children’s Memorial, is gone. But my Mom remembers. “You were four. You were very sick. Children’s Memorial was the best. But this was back when they didn’t let parents spend the night. That’s just the way they did things then. We had to leave you there overnight. That was hard.”
The Chicago Hospital is gone. What do I remember? Reaching back as far as I can, I remember sounds of wailing terror on the other sides of the walls. Do I really remember that? Or is it just that I sleep with the white noise of the fan, the air conditioner or humidifier most every night of my life? White noise to block out all the pain. All that white noise and the fact that my parents came back to the first rate medical facility and we went home.
Now home for the refugee children is the camps. Parents that don’t come back. And the classic cry of the abusive husbands of the world, “See what you did? YOU made me beat the children!” goes up as the fingers point.
There is no more denying that it exists. The proof is that the ruling party remains, defends the practice, and lets it go on. They let it go on. So there is no argument this time. No diversion will work. There is only good and evil. And if you have no connection, not a big one or a small one, to the separation of parent and child: put yourself in that Walmart. Breathe in. Smell the terror. Hear the cries. Send a lullaby out to those kids the camps.
The hospital is gone. But the lullaby for those kids and for their parents is in all of our hearts. Stop for a moment. Feel it? You remember. Still not sure? Go read what Laura Bush said. She said it perfectly. Listen for those kids. Sing that song of heart. You know the words.
Sing that hard times come again no more.