In this very difficult week I searched for something to say that might reflect the terrible news around the world involving the deaths of young children. Not just the Israeli and Palestinian teenagers whose deaths have triggered even more killings, but also the unimaginable pain of children leaving their parents and homes – the parents sending them off – for a long and dangerous trip to the United States not knowing if they will make it or if they will ever be seen again. Daily carnage in American streets and homes of children shot dead every day, but whose deaths go unreported, seemingly unnoticed except by those who loved them.
As it was once said to me about The Actual Dance, where is the beauty and dignity in all of this!? Is there anything but devastation, horror and heart break so deep that the soul cries?
Last year I wrote a poem, Hollow, shortly after the Newtown, Sandy Hook School slaughter of young kids. It argued, in effect, that the Dance does happen, even then, but it happens differently.
I was going to use it as my blog for this week, and as I thought more about it, the words didn’t seem exactly right for this week. Instead, I wrote this:
As it was once said to me about The Actual Dance, where is the beauty and dignity in all of this!? Is there anything but devastation, horror and heart break so deep that the soul cries?
Last year I wrote a poem, Hollow, shortly after the Newtown, Sandy Hook School slaughter of young kids. It argued, in effect, that the Dance does happen, even then, but it happens differently.
I was going to use it as my blog for this week, and as I thought more about it, the words didn’t seem exactly right for this week. Instead, I wrote this:
Hardest of Them All
It is a time of Dances, the hardest of them all.
Our children are going away
Eval, Gil’ad, Nftali, Mohammad
And more and more and more
Across our border, away from home
In our streets and alleyways and American homes
And more and more and more and more
It is a time of Dances, the hardest of them all
July 11, 2014 © Samuel A Simon, All rights Reserved
It is true that there is great agony and grief with each child’s death. In the moment it seems perhaps naïve or even cruel to think and talk of love. And after all, that is what The Actual Dance is – the engagement of love between souls: one leaving, the other still here.
I believe in love as the essence of life and that it exists in a tangible form as part of who we each are. And despite the visible terror and pain of this week, it is still true: The Actual Dance is a dance that each and every one of us will dance.
The death of a child does not end the love. The heat of the grief that follows does not extinguish the love. It might eclipse it for a time, the love though is still there.
In the exploration of the parameters of love and loss and meaning I have come to believe that each and every loss of someone we love involves a process that is a form of what the “Dance” is all about. It is a process of engagement at the most fundamental levels of human existence with life and love. For me, and I say this in the show, I believe that the the love inside of us, we take it with us. We take only our half. The other half remains in those we loved. There is a real and identifiable connection that continues forever. These children will never leave their parents hearts.
The Dance with or for our children is indeed the hardest of the all. A grace exists in understanding and feeling that connection and love we had with them. With that grace we can begin again to acknowledge and cherish the beauty of what our love for them really meant. It is how we become whole again, finding and holding on to the love inside us that connected to the other and cherishing that connection.
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