Gallows Humor #6 -- Deep of Night

Gallows humor #6 (posted on FB July 24; copied to blog 7/24.  “Deep of Night”)

There will be memorial services for children killed by abortion on September 14, all over the country.  The DC area event is taking shape; details TBA.  For now, it’s here, labeled “gallows humor.”  Skip if offended.

I love the “deep” of night.  Odd metaphor, that.  Why is the night like an ocean?  Where’s the “shallow” of night?  Or when?  The deep of night is a different world – different sounds, different smells, different population.  Charlie McCarthy, who pioneered peace studies at Notre Dame, wanted to have retreats scheduled in the deep of the night, with conferences between 1 am and 4 am, because the mental cues are all different then, and deep new insights can surface.

For me, part of the experience of the deep is in my ears.  Everything is cotton-ball muffled, and moves slow.  Thoughts don’t travel by snapping synapses, but by clumsy messengers wading through molasses.

One night years ago, the “deep” found a group of us in a parking lot near Peirce Mill, going through trash we had taken from dumpsters at two sites.  We had a large haul, perhaps 30 bodies.  To find the bodies, we had to remove and poke through everything – about 30 stinking trash bags that night.  We had learned to work efficiently, to look for baby-blue “chucks” (disposable absorbent bed pads) rolled around the debris of an abortion, including a small mesh bag from the nozzle of a suction machine, with a smashed body inside.  When we found the bodies, we set them apart, individually wrapped.  From the mountain of trash, we expected only a couple of pounds of humanity.

We were spread out over a couple of parking spots.  We had a pile of unprocessed bags on the left, a tarp to work on in the middle, with a growing block of small bodies arranged neatly, and a pile of re-bagged trash on the right. 

Deep night.

A couple of cops showed up.

“What are you doing?”

Dennis Burdick was standing aside at the moment, smoking.  He has a very engaging style – respectful, hesitant, but blunt.  “Well, we have the bodies of babies here, from the trash in back of two abortion clinics.  We are taking them out of the trash, to give them a respectful burial.”  Puff.

One cop stared at him, while the other inspected the worksite, looking at the bodies quietly, then cussing a bit.  I kept working: dumping, spreading, checking, scooping, stuffing. 

“Hell of a mess,” commented the first cop. 

Dennis: “Yes, sir.  I wish you would do something to stop it.”

Cop: “You want me to stop it?  Arrest you guys for littering?”

Dennis: “Oh, no.  I mean, stop the killing.  Look at those babies.  What can you do about it?”

Cop: “I can’t do anything about that.  But you guys – make sure you clean up this mess.”

Dennis: “Yes, sir.  We sure will.”

Thirty bodies, still bloody.  Make sure you pick up all the Macdonald’s wrappers.

Best we can do?

Deep night.