On April 23rd, the disability world was shaken by another tragedy.
The newspaper headline was brutal: Mother Drowns Two Children.
Both were autistic.
The impact is immediate: the reader is left breathless.
Perhaps we should remain breathless for a long time after such news, and honor it with silence.
Say nothing. Do not turn it into bar talk or gossip on the bus. Do not wallow in blame and pity, do not pose as psychologists and judges pointing fingers at circumstances and culprits, do not give in to pointless lamentation.
There is no merit, and it is deeply disrespectful, to hunt for details and further developments out of mere curiosity.
Our only humble gesture of solidarity should be silence.
Silence does not mean looking away, minimizing, or forgetting. Rather, I believe silence allows us to think seriously—to ask ourselves how many times we too have enabled such tragedies to happen.
How often do we turn away from the suffering of those near us? How often do we fail to speak against cruelty toward those who cannot defend themselves? How often do we deny friendship and company to those who need it as much as bread? How often do we show impatience with someone who moves restlessly in class or cries out in church?
In these difficult times, when it seems acceptable to cut back on acts of solidarity for fear of threatening our comfortable lives, let us leave the judges, doctors, and priests to their impossibly hard work. And let us try—truly try—to preserve in such painful events the dignity of silence and reflection.
Pennablù, 2010