Words that Never Leave You: “Soon we stop crying for the dead. But all we can do is cry for the living.”
Part Thirteen in an ongoing series from Hollie's book "Words That Never Leave You: Fifty Pearls of Wisdom and Reflection from Survivors Across the World."
In the crude aftermath of the ISIS onslaught in Iraq, I spent a burning, bitter day in the northwestern city of Tel Afar observing men pull up the dead from mass graves submerged in the sewage of what had been a prison for the merciless fighting force. I stood – guttered and wasted with helplessness – as civil defense volunteers trudged up the remains, beyond recognition, into the harsh sunlight.
Afterward, I burrowed myself into a small gap between the fence for a moment to breathe and wipe a few tears away. A small boy – who watched the whole recovery process from the rooftop of his next-door home – noticed my distress and moved closer to loosely converse in Arabic beside me.
He looked through the gaping hole and into my tearful eyes.
“Soon, we stop crying for the dead,” the boy whispered. “But all we can do is cry for the living.”
Perhaps in our grief, in our devotion to the aftermath, we forget to live. We forget presence, we forget that all we have, for better or worse, is the people and places that reside right here and right now.
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