Day 8 - loved

Not everyone brings a sign when they pray.
i made this one last spring, because there is a court injunction that states we aren't allowed to speak to people unless spoken to - and i felt that i wanted some way to communicate my heart to the hurting families filling that parking lot to overflowing day in and day out. 
The reverse says, "Life is a Gift".
It was a chilly wet day yesterday... and there were no people praying on the sidewalks when i arrived at noon.  i grabbed my sign and my keys and made my way to the corner - holding up the side brightly coloured by my little ones for the world to see. 
i wasn't there long when i saw him.  He wasn't much younger than Neil... similar build, but with shaggy blond hair.  He must have been waiting in his car when i got there, because i didn't see him among the other fathers waiting, pacing outside that steel clinic door.  He shoved his hands in the pockets of his black down filled vest, and strode anxiously closer to the door.  After a few minutes, it opened and a pretty girl walked out.  Her shoulders drooped with sadness - and when they made it into each others arms, he scooped her face in his hands and she reached up... up... up... just like i have to do with my love, to put her arms around his neck. 
Despair. 
They stood there - oblivious to the chubby man smoking a cigarette by his red mini van as he waited in that parking lot.  She cried, and he whispered in her ear...
'Oh, Father' - i wept aloud... 'There's another way... Can't we tell them there's another way?  Why don't they know that there is another way?"
Arms draped one around the other, they made their way to their vehicle - and pulled out of that place that brings death - and onto a highway where their vehicle wasn't distinguishable from any other - their loss less obvious.  Their pain would now be a shameful secret that they would carry - conflicted by the very presence of their agony in a culture that condones murder. 
i held my sign high... i wanted her to see... to remember... i could see her pale face looking out the passenger side window as the car sped away...
And the clinic door continues to open and close.