Martin, Elisa, Maria
In Sydney, Australia lived two children, a brother and sister, ten and eleven years old. Their family came from Colombia. Their mother loved them. They went to school together, to a special school called St. Lucy's, because they were both autistic. They didn't speak, but they found ways to communicate all the same through their art.
I love this photo of Elisa. It shows just how she interacts with her world. I've done the same thing, feeling objects with my lips rather than just my fingertips. If this picture is typical of her, then Elisa must indeed have had an artist's mind. She didn't see just the feather; she saw alll its small parts. And she didn't only see it; she wanted to know that feather, every part of it, taste and smell and feel of feather. At my age, I know too much about how many germs can be on a feather; but at her age, I wouldn't have known. I would just have wanted to know that feather in its entirety. I never met Elisa, but if this picture does show how she experienced the world, I think we might have been friends.
Ten-year-old Martin was artistically precocious--not just good at art for an autistic child, but good at art for any child his age. Here's some of his artwork:
Remember--this is a kid who is only ten years old. This is a kid who already knows more about color than I do, and I'm thirty-three years old. Look at the placement of those fish. They're moving just like real fish, and you can see them doing it. Give that child some time to gain technical skill, and he could have become a wonderful artist as his style and skills matured.
Big sister Elisa loved art too, but she was known more for her outgoing personality. When they were interviewed, her teachers always mentioned her smile. She would look up at her teachers, smile, and lead them by the hand. She loved music and dancing.
Here's Elisa using a computer:
Interesting, isn't it, how she always seems to have a thoughtful look on her face? It's as though she doesn't really bother with facial expressions when she's thinking deeply, because she's too involved in her world. Maybe her teachers remember her smile so much because when she smiled, she did it because she *meant* to smile. She wanted to connect with them, and her desire was so obvious they loved her for it.
The family adopted a puppy:
He grew into a big dog, all wrinkly face and slobbery tongue. He should have grown old as they grew up.
Their mom was called Maria Claudia, and she loved them. She was one of the parents who could always be counted on to come to school and participate in her children's education. For autism awareness day, Maria posted about her children: "...people with autism have the [same] needs and desires as you and me, but they just see life in a different way. They think freely." She was considering returning to Colombia with her children, where she hoped to find better support for them.
The family: Martin, Elisa, and Maria.
Those of you reading this probably already know what happened to Maria, Elisa, Martin, and their dog. When I read about them, I wasn't surprised, and I was saddened by how little I was surprised. All that potential, all that childlike enjoyment of life, all that charm, all that love, was lost to us forever.
They died on Monday, October 17, 2016. They were murdered by their father, her husband. In the weekend before, he had installed pipes throughout the house to release deadly carbon monoxide, turning the house into a gas chamber that would pipe poison into their rooms from the ceiling. Maria, Elisa, Martin, and their dog were all gassed to death; the killer died in the house as well. Elisa and Maria died together, mother and daughter sharing a bed. Maybe she had had nightmares, or needed her mother nearby to help her sleep.
The usual media response, "pity them, for they had to raise autistic children", and the excuses about being overwhelmed, followed. It came out that the husband had looked into euthanasia.
I need to emphasize here that this is not an isolated incident. Every day I monitor the news and document the deaths of disabled people; every day there are more to add to the list. Sometimes there's half a paragraph and one mention. Sometimes, like for these children, there's wider coverage, but for every death that's widely covered, there are dozens that you don't hear about. For every death that's mentioned even in a local paper, there are even more that go unrecognized and unreported.
Martin, Elisa, and their mother Maria are representatives of a large population. And every single murder victim, however unknown, is just as real a person as these children were.
For the disabled, gas chambers are still a daily reality of life. This is our Holocaust--a slow, hidden thing that takes place in back rooms and shoddy nursing homes and jails and on the street. Our elders die from starvation with bedsores down to the bone. Our children are beaten to death by those they should have been able to trust. Our teenagers are labeled "behaviorally challenged" and suffocated by staff who restrain them so that they can't breathe. We commit suicide after years of harassment by bullies no one will protect us from. We are shot on the streets by police when we can't comply immediately with shouted commands we may not understand. We are poisoned through medical malpractice and by alternative medicine. We die from child abuse; we're beaten to death by muggers who think we look like an easy target.
When I first started researching for my Autism Memorial, I had few enough names that I knew them all by heart. Eventually I began making notes of all disabilities, not just of autism; I now have so many names in the Memorial Annex that I have to cross-reference them to figure out whether I am reading about an old tragedy or a new one. I'm up to number 2,097, and when I do my resarch today, I'll probably find another half-dozen or so. These are just the ones that make it to the news. These are the people I'll never meet, whose contributions our world will never have. We are missing a part of the disability community, and we can never get it back.
I'm working for ASAN's Disability Day of Mourning now, as a volunteer researcher. I monitor the news; I find names. The day of mourning is for those disabled who were killed by caregivers--not by paid caregivers, but by family members who should have treated them with kindness. Even these specific criteria leave us with a list hundreds of names long.
I debated with myself about whether to use the word "Holocaust" to describe what is happening to disabled people worldwide. I've studied the Holocaust that happened before and during World War 2, and I know just how serious and horrible a thing it was. I worried that to compare modern hate crimes to the Nazi Holocaust would minimize the Holocaust. But... I kept thinking of autopsy photos I had come across, those of a disabled woman who had been starved to death. There was no difference between that body and one you might find in pictures of prisoners starved to death at Auschwitz. And there are many, many more like her. I will never forget those pictures, and I never want to.
I came to the conclusion that to call the widespread murders of the disabled a "holocaust" is not an exaggeration. For us, it's not organized and systematic with entire towns purged all at once; it's hidden, almost casual, deaths isolated and scattered. We die alone, rather than in crowds. Though we did lose tens of thousands to the Nazi Holocaust, it wasn't six million; rather, we have been targets of hate crimes for all of recorded history. We die of starvation, of preventable disease; we die from shooting, and yes, we die in gas chambers. We too have gaps in our communities that can never be filled because the person that should have been there is dead--dead because someone hated them, or thought they were a burden, or simply didn't care.
I have no answers and no solutions, other than to tell you to remember the dead. Remember them, and keep your eyes open. Your disabled neighbors, your family members, or even a total stranger you meet on the street may need you to defend them. What you see in public will be the mildest, least offensive of what happens behind closed doors. Don't ignore it. And when you get a chance to help, however slim it is, take it.