Tragically, kids are killed all the time in Chicago and elsewhere, most of them innocent victims and most of their names thrown into the wind and forgotten by all but those people who knew and loved the kids. (Rick Kogan/Chicago Tribune)
Chicago Tribune reporter Rick Kogan wrote an article about an outdoor space at the Obama Presidential Center. It is dedicated to Hadiya Pendleton, an innocent teenager shot and murdered as pray and spray bullets flew through a park where she was sitting with friends. You can read his column at the above link.
Over the past few years, numbers of innocent children, including toddlers and infants, were murdered by the pray and spray killers. Their names are now known only to God. The latest was 8-year-old Melissa Ortega, who was murdered while walking with her mother in Little Village, a neighborhood I know well. Her name, like the others, will be “thrown into the wind and forgotten.”
The children’s parents are members of a club no one wants to join, Club Dead. Losing a child must be one of the most horrific things that can happen to parents. Yet, in this merciless and pitiless city, no one cares. Elected officials do not care. Citizens do not care. Only the families care.
Who are these children? What are their names? How many children were murdered over the past few years? How many parents are suffering their loss? Who are the parents? What hopes, dreams and aspirations did they have for their children? Why are their names “thrown into the wind and forgotten?”
Hadiya Pendleton is being memorialized because she performed at former President Obama’s second inauguration. The Obama’s made an empathetic connection with the family. Hadiya Pendleton will be remembered because of their empathetic connection.
Sometimes, when a child is killed, a memento mori is created. There are flowers, inflatables, candles, religious images, handmade signs, and other artifacts to remember the dead. They eventually disappear and are forgotten like the names of the murdered children.
The murder of children should shock the conscience. Our consciousnesses are no longer shocked by the murder of children. We shrug our shoulders and go on with our lives. We are immune from the shock and horror of child murders. The murdered children are just another number, a digit, a piece of data. One of the hundreds of other murder victims in this city of death.
We forget because we do not want to be reminded of the horror inflicted on children and their families. We call it gun violence, blaming inanimate objects. We refuse to call murder what it really is, human violence. We cannot accept the fact that we humans can be so cold and callous.
Parents must bury the dead, their children. Parents must live with the grief and memories forever. There are no memorials or peace parks for their children. There should be a memorial space for all the murdered children, a memento mori, including a wall with their names etched on it. It should stand as a permanent monument to show the world that Chicago is a cold, heartless, merciless, and pitiless city.