September

September 1st

It has been almost 22 months since Beydn was diagnosed with a variation of the most easily treatable form of childhood cancer. It’s been a little more than 18 months since he died. In that time we have become outraged over a never ending succession of headlines, some that I’m sure you’ll have to dig into your consciousness to recall, others that will continue being regurgitated front page begging to be resolved. Routinely, we’ve been indignant because ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬. We’ve been angered because some thought it necessary to ‪#‎StomptheFlag‬ to prove it. We’ve cried because a lion who was ‪#‎notatrophy‬ was killed for sport and tried to compare his life to human life in an unending debate over the morality of abortion and the cry to ‪#‎DefundPlannedParenthood‬

To be clear, let’s be real. No one should die a violent death because they are acting in a way that helps them survive in a system that has perpetuated itself for centuries, but laws are laws (albeit some ludicrously) to give us order and safety. No one should desecrate the flag that gifts them their freedom of speech, but they have that freedom; so, no one should stop them. And no living thing should be destroyed before it can fulfill its purpose, but no one should be forced to parent beyond their emotional, mental, or financial means. Is that all grey enough for you?

People keep fighting as if there is a black and a white when, in fact, everything is grey. Everything. I’ve grown babies in my body and could never have intentionally ended what I knew was life already there. But I also watched Beydn die, and if in that moment someone had offered a cure to save him, some research done with fetal tissue, then I would have begged them to give it. How do you get to say you mind your own business about endangered species, but want to control the autonomy of someone else’s body? How do you break down the first signs of human life in utero to nothing but basic cells and still become enraged over the slaughter of a mere animal? How do you dismiss the murder of a man who is living a life circumstances dictate he live, but hate the woman who refuses to add her progeny to the cycle of circumstance? How do any of us think we’re right?

We’re not.

No one should be forced into a life or a death by the choices of another, and yet every single day an average of 7 kids are. We sit in judgement of actions and attitudes that are deeply marred in history and personal experience and yet do nothing about the things we can expediently change for the better. We choose not to fund research for childhood cancer. We choose to pretend it will never be our kid who is sick. We choose to look the other way while big pharmaceutical companies profit from adult blood pressure medicines and the smaller non money makers of children’s cancer cures are ignored.
We’re killing our kids.

Why should I care about a lion? That was a big line of indignation from so many after Cecil made the news. Let me tell you why. Because a life is a life no matter how small, black lives matter, police lives matter, and so do furry ones, but to say all lives matter when you are on top is dismissive at best. There is no exact comparison, maybe. But there should be equal compassion. The same attitude that bred one self-righteous-I’m-highest-on-the-food-chain attitude also gave life to the others. The society that makes white, upper class men the lucky recipients of the best medical treatments is also the society that deemed it tolerable for them to use excess income to trek to foreign lands in order to murder majestic beasts. It’s the same society that drives a hand full of individuals to decide the best way to express their anger over racial inequities is to destroy and burn cities, the same one that drives an individual to shoot unarmed worshippers in the name of skin color. This is the same society that makes all our other dirty actions ok- keeps brown skin marginalized, gives authority unchecked power, keeps women from learning to say yes or no making abortions a necessary decision, making poor children into poverty stricken adults. This isn’t four dozen problems. It’s just one. Where we fail is at seeing there is no one side to any debate; then there’s cancer. Cancer is, as always, the great equalizer.

Because it is also our same society that will let those rich white men’s children die the exact same death as poor brown ones. We will continue to fail children of every race, situation, and upbringing over and over until clinical trials are funded, until kids are allowed to choose treatments that are now deemed only for adults, until childhood cancer is looked at as profitable for the world outside “just” sick kids. Until the money is there kids of every ethos will keep dying. And one of those kids might have been the truth seeker, the peace speaker. One of those kids might have been the one who could sew all these ideas together. But we watched as their cells rebelled, their bodies betrayed them, and we prayed, but just weren’t angry enough to put ourselves in motion. The answer to this prayer is the ability to take action.

So many things are spun up in the impossible web of generations of wrong doing and wrong thinking. There are so many wrongs in our world and the side effects of them all are great grey injustices. This one thing, we can do something about. My point is not that all these other vitally important socially and culturally blurred issues don’t need addressing. They do. Desperately. Our world is as broken as it is inspirational. My point is that this issue, this whole kids are dying because we can’t get the right drugs to them thing- IT’S FIXABLE. AND IT APPLIES TO EVERY SINGLE WALK OF LIFE IN AMERICA AND THE REST OF THE WORLD.

We want our kids to live in a world where they don’t see skin color as a difference maker but at most as a learning opportunity. We want them to live on an earth where there are lions roaming their native habitats not just existing behind bars. We want them to live as part of a community where they don’t see economic disparity as a brick wall but as a chance to share what they have. We want our kids to live. All of them. But for our family, and so many others, that ship has violently sank.

Should we just keep waiting?

‪#‎gogold‬ ‪#‎CCA‬ ‪#‎morethan4‬ ‪#‎stepup‬ ‪#‎forbeydn‬