Soapbox

Good Intentions

Stop sending us Teddy bears.
The twinkling black eyes and cute button noses will bring no smiles,
push, fuzzy bodies stuffed with sympathy and regret
do not comfort us, nor our grieving parents.
They only comfort you,
provide you some release from the pain
that pushes at the back of your eyes
and grips your throat til your breath barely whistles through.
Sending a gift helps you to feel less helpless,
which is blessed oxygen to the heart
when small bodies hit the ground.

But please, stop sending us teddy bears~
rooms and rooms and rooms full
of books, and toys, and crayons,
and thirty- thousand silent, never-to-be-loved bears.
Your fountain of good intention quenches no thirst in us,
only causes pain for those who must decide what to do
with these loving, empty gestures that now fill a warehouse.
The Poohs and Paddingtons you send to us
will never serve as pillow to a shampoo-sweet head,
get smeared with jam, tear an ear loose falliing out of a tree
or be sneaked guiltily  into a suitcase when we go off to college.
They are being made into bricks for a memorial-
surely not what bears are meant  for.

When curious brown eyes, untied shoes and sticky fingers
are suddenly snatched away,
when decades of possibility can be burned in an instant
down to one grim certainty
it is natural to wish to hold on to~ something,
anything that is good and innocent,
to gravitate to symbols of comfort and security
in such a confused and broken world.
Yet how much greater is the tragedy
of gifts sent to children who need nothing
when so many are still in need?

Gifts bring no comfort to those already dead.
Facebook prayers offer no protection for those
who will die tomorrow.

Keep your lamentation and atonement.
Do not send us your anxious nights and fears of the dark.
If you would push back against the shadows
hat steal childhood
and lift the weight of guilt and shame, then
send your gifts to the living.
Books and toys to a  homeless shelter,
stoic bears to offer strength to children too often
poked and cut and stitched back together.
Your time to a foundation working to stop child abuse
is more healing than gifts given after
the final blows have fallen.
Compassion and justice for the living  brings
more light to the world than all the weeping candles,
balloons and drawings,
complacent, doe-eyed angels and teddy bears
left at all the street-corner shrines
for all the souls taken much too young.

So stop sending us teddy bears.
Send them to arms who can hold them.
Send them to those who still feel pain.