What do we tell the children?
Burdened down by a heavy cloak of sadness, I find after three weeks I am still in a state of mourning. No, I did not know anyone who lost their lives in the Easter bombing personally, there were no friends or relatives, I did not know the mother who lost her son, or the father who lost his wife and daughter or the numerous numbers of families who lost one or all their members.
My life still goes on, with all my loved ones around me. But I still grieve, I grieve for the death of my children’s innocent childhood now riddled with possible bomb threats, I look around at what was once a thriving bustling little island now a desert town, its paradise lost. I grieve at the loss of a future that was most promising but is now fraught with uncertainty. I did not have a funeral for this grief, I was not be able to bury it away, no closure, instead it grows a little bit more everyday, bold, brazen and encompassing. My desolate mood trickles down to my children, its scares them when I say no school today, there might be trouble, it panics them when we say we have to avoid crowds and will have to cancel movie plans or even grocery shops runs. How do we reassure them?. We reassure them by telling them that this is not the work of a certain race or peoples of a specific religion, this is the work of people who are misled, who are lost in their causes. As they preach violence we must preach forgiveness, understanding and compassion. Not letting the virus of evil thrive and multiple through our fear and hate, we must work together helping each other of every race and religion to get through these hard and difficult times. We are the goodies, and they are the baddies. This is what we tell our children.