Dear Editor,
The figure stands motionless on the edge of the street. It is a woman, a mother numb and grieving at the loss of her son in very provocative circumstances. She has a placard raised, baring her pain, crying her anguish. She is a mother at the head of a thin, resolute picket line on Carmichael Street.
Her fellow picketers are simple folks, like herself; a mere handful of hurting, caring men and women drawn together in a fateful circle by the arc of splattered blood shed by vengeful, evil hands, some on guns, others behind those guns. They are family in this time of loss and anguish, shrouded in the thunderous reverberations of gunfire; and the soft, gentle, soundless echo of a body, now lifeless, crumpling to the hard, waiting, embracing ground. That same soundless echo carves at their hearts with all the agony of a slashing, unfeeling scalpel, or an exploding shattering warhead. None feels this trauma more than this wounded woman, this pierced mother. She stirs for a moment, then resumes her unyielding posture. This is for my son. This is for justice. This is for Guyana. All of Guyana.
Guyana is right in front of her. It is standing in the form of an immaculately attired police officer, all tanned khaki and glistening shoes. There is an open notebook too; and a pen poised to record the high points of the picketing proceedings: who, what, when… perhaps tone and temperature, too. Guyana is represented by those government officials hurrying into that government building. Some avert the eyes, others stare blandly – make that blankly. There is the careful rearrangement of the countenances of the very senior men from the legal realm –whether political or jurisprudential. They move past with the affected intensity of the heavily preoccupied. Perhaps they are. For those thousand yard stares tell of men in war, or under heavy duress, or terribly tormented. That woman, that mother with the placard can enlighten them on all of that too.
She lives it daily, hourly now. Her stories break the heart. They are a dirge of piercing, of sorrow, of tragedy visiting and staying and inhabiting.
This mother can share her very public story with those concerned Guyanese who slow vehicles down, utter a supportive word, toot horn, or flash lights in solidarity; as well as those who speed up, look away, or are absorbed in their rearview mirror. Yes, she is not alone. She never walks alone. And so, too, is that majestically falling Guyanese patriot Courtney Crum-Ewing. He is watching over this land, even as he falls. Now he walks where he used to run, having gone where the brave flinch and dare not go. And as he walks he, too, is not alone.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
