Yesterday I attended the funeral of two friends of mine, Bob and Susan, who were murdered by their adopted son.
Bob and Susan adopted Moses out of foster-care when he was six. As a toddler, he was found by the police in a dirty diaper on the streets if Oakland. The cops went door to door in the neighborhood trying to find who Moses belonged but they could not. They took Moses’ foot-prints and hand-prints and came up with nothing. They could not even identify his ethnicity. He was Brown. That’s all they knew. One of the cops had Moses for a year as a temporary foster parent.
Moses was given everything, all the love in the world but in the end nothing made a difference. Bob and Susan were exceptional people. Bob was a psychologist and worked with incarcerated men in the San Francisco Jail. Susan was a Physician’s Assistant and worked with the homeless getting them in to housing and medical care. They were very active in Social Justice causes. They were tireless advocates for our country’s disfranchised and their politics were so far left that they made George W. Bush look like Gloria Steinem.
Bob and Susan could not save Moses. Their efforts were repaid by their brutal murder. At their funeral were so many of us who worked in the field, in the trenches, right along beside them. We all struggle to make sense of this. Do our best efforts even make a difference? What’s the point if this is how boundless compassion is repaid?
It breaks my heart. I struggle to go on in my work with the poor, traumatized and disenfranchised. I must honor their legacy by not giving in to despair.
———————————-
links to newspaper articles about all this:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/30/BA9P1N089K.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/01/BAHL1N0VVM.DTL
-
paulysdangerous said:
I’m so sorry to hear of your loss. I work in public health, it’s so sad to see such compassionate people taken away too soon.
-
martaunderthesea said:
this is devastating.
-
i---i liked this
-
soulflower70 said:
fuck im sorry honey
-
soulflower70 liked this
-
inspe liked this
-
eatyourpaisley liked this
-
butlogicbroke liked this
-
fgorgeousthing said:
My thoughts and prayers are with you and everyone affected by this.
-
mrrbrr said:
I’m so sorry to hear of the loss of your friends. it sounds like they were wonderful people. I’ve always really respected the work you do, and I really, really hope this doesn’t stop you from doing it. I hope you know you DO make a difference. <3
-
buxomly said:
Much love to you, friend. Keep your head up, keep trodding.
-
tahlalaliaaa said:
My love is with you and everyone else affected by this even if I don’t know them. x
-
junkyard-bodhisattva posted this
