Crack it wide open- Victor Wooten

Every time I drive around or walk anywhere, I am conscious of the headlines around me and more often than not, its absolute visual pollution. Art reflects life? Yes, so do most of the headlines of newspapers indeed.

Some gruesome examples: "Girl (5) raped"
"5 die as truck crashes into taxi"
"Grandmother raped at graveyard"
"Mother loses kids and husband in horror crash"
and so on and so on.....
Whenever I see this, it affects me deeply and I can't help but ponder on the trauma and the effect these events have on the people involved. Its like reading script directions in a play- "character flies onto stage and lands stage right"( That involves hours of work, designing and making and rehearsing, in one sentence a whole world and people are represented.)

How much  pain and trauma for a child that was raped or mutilated or kidnapped or tortured. What about the parents and families? Nothing happens in isolation, someone suffers, has therapy, lands up in hospital, maybe estranged from loved ones, maybe isolated at school by children that are harsh in their judgement and influenced by the assumptions and prejudices of parents or emotionally stunted adults who rashly spew out their vitriol against the world and anyone who is dares to be different or had the misfortune of having something really horrible happen to them. "Surely something you said or done caused this?" (Some people still view a raped woman as someone "who asked for it")

A grandmother that visited her late husband's grave is deemed "irresponsible" for going to a graveyard. How do her children feel? How does she process it? How is this her fault? And why do we reach these conclusions? Was the driver of the taxi irresponsible? Imagine being in his shoes, having to explain this event to the families involved.
My thoughts to-day centred around the horror crash that killed a mother's children and husband.
I can't begin to imagine what this lady must go through. One sentence and a life is in shreds, having to make arrangements, walking back into an empty house, lying alone in a big bed, having to face the rooms and closets of her loved ones, having to pack it up and move on. How?
Do you move away from everything to start afresh, or do you stay paralysed with grief in a house full of ghosts and memories?. Do you feel guilty about your children? Do you blame God? Do you blame your husband? Yourself?
Do you have to explain this every time you meet people and they ask you about your life?
Do you take sleeping pills and anti-depressants? Will you ever trust enough to love someone again?What about birthdays?

Its heavy, I know, but in a world where we are part of so many statistics, I believe its vital that we remember the people around events. (The police that must handle all of this, the ambulance operators that will be on the scene,....) It takes a village to raise not only the child, but to support and love the ones left behind, broken and traumatised.
In the spirit of Ubuntu: "We are who we are because of other people"

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