“Where Did All the Children Go?” – by Charlotte Martin

After my only son died, I literally lost interest in everything. I had always kept up with the news – local – tri-state – national – and worldwide news. But no more. I just did not care about anything. My life as I knew it had ended. The “end of the world” had happened. For me.

My son had been my life, and all I wanted was for my life to end, so I could go be with my son in Heaven. I started doing crazy things, like putting the bleach in the fridge, and putting the milk in the cabinet over the washer. Of course, I didn’t realize I was doing it. I would only learn when I went to the fridge for some milk and saw the bleach there in its place. Then I would realize that the milk must be where the bleach belonged. I’m pretty sure no one ever drank the bleach, but for all I know, I may have done the laundry with milk.

I would look and look for my glasses while they were on my face the whole time and look for my car keys while I was holding them. People started saying that I was acting crazy. Grief experts tell bereaved parents to tell others that we are NOT crazy. Someone told me that people were saying I was crazy because I covered my son’s grave with pink flowers when it was nearing time for the birth of his baby girl. That did not seem at all crazy to me. I wanted people who may visit his grave to know that the time was near for his daughter’s birth.

Several years went by before I actually got back out in the world again and started going to places that I had not gone to for a long time. A baby boy had been left in my home, and when he got big enough, I started taking him to parks, carnivals, fairs and festivals – anything where I expected there would be lots of other children. However, children became conspicuous by their absence.

No matter where we went, there were hardly any other children around. I wondered what had happened to all the children. Of course, abortions would have accounted for a lot of the absence of children. Yet, still it would not have accounted for this much of an absence.

I asked people everywhere I took my child if they knew what had happened to all the children. “Where are all the children?” I asked cashiers at grocery stores, K-Marts and Dollar Stores. Some people shrugged indifferently when I asked, and others acted like they perhaps thought I was crazy.

In the past, parents who could not afford to take their children to carnivals would sell their blood and plasma to get the money to take them. They would pick up cans and sell them, mow someone’s yard or clean someone’s basement to get extra money so their children could ride carnival rides. Sometimes family members would loan or give them money so their grandchildren, nieces or nephews could have some fun at these special events. I always took a pocket size camcorder to make videos of my adopted child as he squealed with glee or waved to me while on a merry-go-round.

I also started filming rides where not one child was standing in line and not one child was on the rides, as I asked the question to my camcorder: “What has happened to all the children?”.

That was the first time I filmed something that was not there. Children were not there. Perhaps only crazy people film something that is not there. I may have even believed I was crazy for believing that many children had just vanished if I had not captured it on film time and time again.

I will admit that it was nice that my child did not have to stand in lines, but it also seemed like it would have been lonesome for him to be on a ride alone or with only one other child. It seemed surreal – terrible and surreal at the same time.

There were plenty of teenagers at these events, but hardly any young children. I tried to make sense of it. I wondered if the economy was so bad that parents were selling their blood and plasma for necessities like diapers, Orajel, and Tylenol. I had known parents who did that. I wondered if one of those viruses was going around that seemed to affect children only. I wondered if people had nearly stopped having children during those years that I was not getting out. All I knew was that something had happened to children.

I would have perhaps believed the rapture had happened where ALL THE CHILDREN will be taken to be with God, with many parents left behind. But ALL THE CHILDREN had not disappeared. It sure seemed, however, like most of the young children had, in fact, vanished.

They certainly were not at pizza places where they had ball pits for children to jump in and parents buy tokens for them to use on games. At least younger children were not there – hardly any. It would seem like more people would have known what had happened to them, or was it something that happened so gradually, that no one was paying attention?

Was it possible that no one noticed what was going on?

Years went by before I discovered what happened to the young children that I had felt certain would be at those carnivals, fairs, festivals, and parks. And the answer to that is… to be continued.