The Voice I Heard At Meijer's

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​The Voice I Heard At Meijer's

      Last week while on my way to the Meijer's supercenter in Reynoldsburg, Ohio,

...I turned on the radio to NPR. As is so often the case these days, the news was beyond dismal. The radio host was interviewing a pediatric ICU physician, a woman with Doctors without Borders who has worked in Gaza and who was now in contact with fellow doctors there. The pediatrician told of suffering children, hungry children, dead children, destroyed hospitals, dead doctors. In the few weeks since the beginning of the war 190 doctors have been killed in the Gaza bombings, among them the pediatric ICU specialist who trained the doctor being interviewed. 
       There was no more food available for the medical workers in Gaza than for the rest of the population. Along with everyone else, medical workers were getting thinner and thinner. They were drinking non-potable water and getting sick from diarrhea illnesses. 
      The doctor quoted a fellow pediatrician in Gaza who wrote to her that, "We are on our way to collapsing from the horror of the scenes we see...and the world is watching as if we are in a movie theater showing a horror movie, and the viewers are silent." At that point I had to switch radio stations.
​        By the time I arrived at Meijer's my thoughts were no longer on Gaza but on my shopping list, and where to start.     

      I proceeded to the bread section where I strolled the long aisle of well-stocked shelves,

...until I found the special kind of bread that I like.

      As I was tossing several loaves into my cart a voice from nowhere popped into my head and said, "The Gazans don't have bread. The bakeries have been blown up and the aid trucks can't get through." I recalled that I'd read that recently.
     Next I headed to the produce section, where I roamed through the shelves of Roma tomatoes, one of the  half-a-dozen varieties of tomato available, picking and choosing a bagful of the best-looking ones. 

        The voice returned. "The Gazans don't have fresh tomatoes," it said.​ 
        When I moved to the strawberries it added, "And they  don't have any fresh strawberries, either. There probably aren't any markets left where they can buy any fresh food at all."

       From there my brain went into an obsessive loop, the voice reminding me with every item I dropped into my cart, at every every shelf, refrigerated or frozen case that I passed, that I had easy access to all this food while the men, women, and children of Gaza were facing starvation. 
         "They have don't have vegetables," said the voice.

...or meat,

...or cheese,

...or eggs,

...or milk,

...or ice cream,

...or junk food.

       "And what about their pets?" asked the voice as I passed the pet food aisle. 

        "And the children have no toys," said the voice,

"...nothing like these Squishmallows, that children love so much, to soften the sad, hard edges of their existence."

        It being a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, Christmas music was already wafting through the store. From now on our troubles will be miles away, sang the choir. 
       "Yes, terrible troubles are miles away," the voice said. "About 6,000 miles away."
        I stopped pushing my shopping cart. "All right, Lord," I answered in my mind, "tell me what to do about it. Tell me."
         But the voice went silent.

Reference
​https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2023/11/09/doctors-without-borders-gaza