It’s difficult for me to look at this picture because in her beautiful and face I see so much power and love and vitality. I really feel as though those eyes carry great things. They seem to say: Just you wait. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

This morning I heard an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition with the mother of slain Chicago police officer Areannah Preston.

Q: What would you like our listeners to know about Areannah?

She was a light. A star. She wanted to do good things. To make change in this world.

There was something in this grieving mother’s language and in the sound of her voice that reminded me of the grieving mother at the center of our play.

It’s not that hope has died with the loss of her daughter. No. Hope wouldn’t be the right word.

Because hope carries with it an implied uncertainty. I hope my child will make change in the world, will rise to do great things. Will be a shining light.

But what if you don’t hope that for your child but you know it? You know it because she is so brilliant, so inventive, so full of hunger for knowledge, curiosity and caring about the world that you simply know that this being, this little sunshine you had a hand in creating… well the world is going to thank her one day for all she’s done for all of our lives.

My little girl is going to give us all hope.

And then in a matter of days, she’s gone. And there’s no going back. No unsaying things you wish you hadn’t said. There’s just the empty void of the world that never knew her and that never will.

Here’s a link to the interview.

Remembering Slain Chicago Police Officer Areannah Preston

As it was coming to an end, I’d pulled into the garage, closed the garage door and could not turn off the ignition. I sat listening to the last minute or two of the interview and decided I’d better not sit here with the engine running and the garage door closed.

I had a choice to make. Turn off the engine and make a mad dash for the radio inside the house and risk missing one word, one breath.

or:

Don’t move a muscle, don’t risk missing any of it.

I opened the garage door ‘til it was done.