February 14, 2018
I Cry in My Sleep
My face and my pillow were wet, soaked with tears, and throughout my being I was consumed with fears. The most recent times feel like “always” when tragedies continue week after week. My throat gets dry and I find it hard to speak. I feel my heart pounding in my chest how apathy that follows but I cannot rest.
In times that seem too numerous to mention—I’d rather I was suffering from a form on dementia. Especially when children are brutally murdered, kidnapped or maimed…like the children that were recently discovered in their home and chained. Maybe it’s because I have seen thousands of child orphans who later passed on without even a coffin.
The refugee camps are filled with so many who suffer, children who languish, and starve, lost in this buffer. Their pain is from both natural and human disasters tortured and injured from violent masters. My compassion for them and so many others, extends to the brothers and sisters and Mothers. The ugly war dragon rises slowly in stealth, breathing fire and destruction and for certain mass death.
Weeping the night tears, yes, I cry in my sleep hear the death those weapons did wreak…. taking the lives of the students and friends…of their teachers and coaches who can no longer speak. Hiding in closets, shaking in fear, knowing their lives or end could be near…
I cry when thinking of Sandy Hook, still- children in Beslan, Aurora, Chardon, Aurora and more that were killed. At this moment, this very moment, I’m biting my lip blinking back the pool of tears that soon my heart grip. I can hear them crying and screaming in pain, and the sound of those haunt me and I think I’m insane.
Why do so many children have to be stolen away, by automatic weapons that killed them this day? It’s not enough to just remember and with prayer…and in a few days, apathy will come, and another will dare…to burst into a room filled with youth with hopes and dreams, but always and always, I can hear those awful screams.
I know there must be a chamber in our human hearts that is filled with love and kindness and all it imparts. Should I cry in my sleep because if this is the truth, that there’s someone out there filled with hate and dark sleuth? To never be together again and leave loved ones so sad…thinking of the future their children might have had.
Should I cry because that life together is forever gone? Even though much will be written, perhaps even a song. Their spirits will envelope the air that we breathe, but our eyes will just reflect how we exist, how we grieve. It’s hard to turn the page and live on and feel life’s good, when we know these youth and children could be alive here as they should.
Yes, I cry in my sleep and the pain won’t go away, especially when it’s human lives that were taken from us today and prayer and good wishes won’t ease the terrible hurt, when children’s bodies lay beneath the earth…so how does humanity stop all the hate…that send so many children to heaven’s gate?
I cry in my sleep and my pillow is wet…knowing that if actions aren’t taken there’ll be another tragedy yet. Why Lord today, that we celebrate love will our children be ascending to somewhere above? Can’t we stop this murderous way that we live and remember to love, and to cherish and give?
I cry in my sleep. I cry in my sleep. I wake myself up and I weep, yes, I weep. For so many years I try to comfort and heal, but instead it keeps going when lives they do steal. I wish there was something, little or small, that could comfort their hearts as they break, and they fall…I cry in my sleep…I cry in my sleep…
Joanne Tawfilis