Stories of Lost Children
Our Kids
by Andy Johnson, Austin, TX, U.S.A.
My childhood sweetheart and I were going to have a baby. We were far too young but very happy and excited. When she was about 5 months pregnant, a man raped her near her home and killed our son. We tried to have another child the next year, but she died shortly after birth. Their mother and I had been hanging onto thin shreds of sanity and faith up until that point. We both went crazy, but in different ways. We splt up under the strain and didn't speak to each other at all until recently. Now, some 12 years later, we've begun talking to each other again and trying to grieve. It's difficult. Neither of us believe in go anymore, at least not a god who cares about us. We also have some severe memory problems related to our mental states at the time. On a recent trip to see me, their mother brought pictures of the kids - pictures I had never seen. She put them in her luggage thinking it would be safer. the airline lost her bag. It was like losing them all over again. There was one ray of hope recently. I bought a photo for her for Mother's Day. In it, two children ride a parking lot carnival whirlygig, each alone on their own seat. The boy is forward, almost out of the frame. His short black curly hair blurs as he flies by, but we cannot see his face. The girl is on the next seat, face turned downward, perhaps a little grumpy and hot today. She has dark olive skin and brown hair. She looks to be 4 or 5, and the boy perhaps a year older. She asked why I got her that particular gift. I said something like this... In some alternate universe where things worked out differently, you and I have hundreds of pictures of our kids. Perhaps one slipped through the cracks. It's a message from us, to us, saying that somewhere else our kids are growing up and they're fine, they're fine, they're just fine...
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