To the editor:
It’s been a good long while since I lost someone very close to me, so I had trouble figuring out what I was seeing the other night at the Peterborough Lights for Liberty Rally.
As people arrived, I handed them a clipboard, asked for their email address. Then I thanked them profusely if they agreed to provide it. “Oh. Of course,” they would respond, that look on their face.
That look. The one I had last seen at my father’s funeral. “Of course,” it said. “How could I NOT attend this?” “Of course,” it said. “Isn’t it so obvious that I would show up? It’s what we do in times like these.”
A death in the family. That is exactly what these inhumane, cruel human detention centers feel like.
I see another photo of a child, alone and undler a damn space blanket, and my heart dies a little.
That spring after my father’s death, I was cleaning leaves out of my hosta beds, so full of road grime and tangled stems. Back-breaking work, it was. But there!! What?! The brightest yellow heads, just beginning to take shape, on my forgotten daffodils. Hope grew amidst the rot and dirt. Despite the rot and the dirt.
Thank you all for being the daffodils.
Christine Halvorson Sheldon
Peterborough