Thought for the Day - 30 July 2024 - Weeping with Southport

The following is the script I delivered on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday, 30 April 2024. You can listen back on BBC Sounds here.

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Good morning,

‘Mummy, can children die?’

The words came from my then five-year-old who was sitting at the back of the car as I drove him home from school. I’d long dreaded the question – but I still wasn’t prepared for it. I winced. Yes. And knew in that moment that something of his innocence had been taken away.

 Like every mother, I’d wanted not only to keep him safe from physical harm, but also to protect him from the knowledge of heartbreak and pain.

I know that I began to see the world differently when as a child I realised that such a horror was possible. Death is something we must all wrestle with, but the death of a child is a tragic upending of the order of things. Children killed in violent ways by human hands: unthinkable.

That such a horror can happen in a place like Southport, as it did yesterday? Unbearable. The incongruence of the terrible scenes taking place at a Taylor Swift dance party for children at the start of the summer holidays makes it even harder to fathom.

There are no easy answers to why such terrible things take place; no ways to make it better. For the parents of the children that died yesterday in the horrific attack, for those who were injured and will forever be traumatised by what took place, pat answers – religious or otherwise - just won’t do.

There is no word in the English language for a parent whose child has died. Widows and widowers have lost their spouses, orphans have lost their parents. But a parent whose child has died – whether in Southport or Israel or Gaza or Ukraine – it’s too painful for us to even name.

In the Massacre of the Innocents – the children killed by King Herod after the  birth of Jesus – the gospel of Matthew alludes to an Old Testament passage that reads:

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”

I’ve long found this passage haunting because it paints a vivid picture of my worst nightmare. For the families in Southport, the pain of losing a child is no longer a nightmare, but a living and waking reality.

In wrestling with such tragedy, the biblical writers present us with images of a God who steps in to our worst days, the pain of our nightmares, and sits in solidarity with those who find themselves in the valley of the shadow of death. And with those who mourn. ‘God is near to the brokenhearted,’ it says in the book of Psalms.

The days of seeking answers about what happened in Southport will come. But now is too soon. The grief is too raw. Maybe today is the day we too hear the cries of those whose hearts are broken. Maybe that’s all we can do.  

Photo credit: Photo by khampha phimmachak on Unsplash