It's too soon.
It's always too soon, but it's even more too soon than usual. Another Autistic child was murdered by his mother. So was his sister, neurology unknown.
It's too soon.
We were still reeling from Issy, is pain from Alex, have never-healing wounds from Daniel, from George, from Calista, from Katie, from hundreds of others. And now Jaelen and Faith are added to the list too.
It's too soon. It's always too soon.
And we are hurting. Many of us cannot stop crying, or are going to have to shut ourselves down to do what needs doing (things always need doing. Time doesn't stop just because the world crashes down again). You can't call in "someone killed another kid for being like me" to work. Not even if disclosing to your employer is safe.
It's too soon, but shit needs doing, so we have to shut ourselves off & do every day life.
Before we even knew Jaelen's name people were justifying his murder, saying how hard it is for parents. Always always always demanding we think about the parents. Did they think about Jaelen? Did they think about Issy? Did they think about Torrance? Did they think about Leosha? Did they think about Tracy? Did they think about Chrstopher? All signs point to no.
It's too soon. I can't think about the parents. I will never be able to understand what they did, why they did it. Not ever. I am mourning all the people killed for existing while disabled. My heart is full and my eyes are leaking for the killed, not for the killers.
It's always too soon. We aren't done mourning the last victim. We aren't done with necessary activism for the last few victims. There's always another disabled person whose memory needs honored-often lost at the hands of someone who should hold them dear. But the job of mourning? It falls to our community. And we do it. And we fight for the living, so there isn't another name, another story, added to the saddest part of our history.
But there will be more. And it will always be too soon.
6 comments:
Your words speak epically here.
So much pain. ((Sending you love and hugs)). We will lean on each other.
It's too soon and there's always people lined up to make excuses.
I don't care about the parents - they're killers. I care about the children who have been robbed of everything.
I worry about the press making excuses for the parents and drumming up sympathy for them. I worry about how everyone else is quick to preach for sympathy and forbearance for these poor parents who were pushed to such extremes.
Always too soon. We have to go on, but it is getting harder and harder. Excuses are made. I fall back on "you shall not murder." Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Yeah, you'd think "don't kill your children" would be a fairly straightforward and easy thing to do.
I literally can't imagine who could "justify" something like this. My parents, one of whom suffers from debilitating mental illness, the other as greatly from physical, for whom I caused immense problems by being the way I am, who had reason to resent me & want to get rid of me if anyone ever does, have always been there to support me when it really counted.
I'm not talking doting "perfect" parents. I'm talking about a couple of people who were stressed out, at their wits' end, trying to deal (on top of all their other problems) with a kid who made their lives harder in difficult-to-understand ways substantially different from what they'd expected in a child, who nevertheless made time to do things like visit the Superintendent of Schools to make it very clear that it was not acceptable that they only found out I'd received a head injury from some other students when I got home, because the nurse didn't even call.
It's not polite to say that some people are better than others, but by God, it sure seems there are a lot of substandard people out there.
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