The Silent Stars Go By

My partner and I have just recently returned tonight from the Christmas parade in the nearby seaside town of Lewes. We participated in the parade with a group which calls itself The Silent Vigil. This group began with one lone woman standing in front of the museum on Sunday afternoons, holding a sign and silently protesting the attacks on Iraq. Over time people began to join her, and the Vigil has become a regular Sunday afternoon event. There have been up to one hundred participants at its largest, a handful at its smallest. I have gone sporadically, but my friends go every single Sunday afternoon and stand in silent remembrance and protest.

Last Memorial Day was one of the largest attendances. We formed a line down the street, holding bamboo poles with prayer flags attached on lines between them. Written on each prayer flag was the name of military personnel who had died since the beginning of the war. At that time the number was in the mid 1600's.

Tonight the group had made a float for the parade - a small trailer/cart with a roof, but no walls. Hanging from the roof and attached to the floor were strings of white paper stars, each one carrying the name of a fallen American soldier. There were lights interspersed among the stars, and when the cold December wind blew through the cart the stars fluttered and danced. There were 2174 of them.

Behind the cart came group members in white sweatshirts with a peace sign logo (and several sets of long underwear under it, in my case, and I hope everyone else's) holding long strings of colored paper stars, each with the name of an Iraqi child killed during this vile war. My partner and I, with another woman, were carrying one of these strings. I started to read them, and broke down after the first several. I can't replicate the names here, but I can give you their ages. They were one year old, nine years old, one month old, 21 months old, two years old, and fourteen years old. This was the small group that I could take in. All the other chains of stars bore similar names and ages.

Babies. Children. Many of them siblings of one family. I don't pray anymore. Or, at least not in any recognizable way, to anyone, or for anything. But I walked through the festive little town of Lewes, bright tonight with holiday decorations and lights, past the family groups of parents and children bundled against the cold wind, and I held those murdered Iraqi children and their parents in my heart. I grieved for them and the lives they will never have, the holidays they will never celebrate. As I also grieved for the young Americans lost to their families in this needless evil war, for those who loved them, for what this administration is doing to this country and to the world.

| +Save/Share | |