All I Have for Haiti (Original post Jan. 22, 2010)

I don't have a dime in my pocket that I can pledge for Haiti relief.

I don't have a passport so I can't hop on a plane and move rocks around, trying to find the living and the dead.

I could be homeless next week. I'm in no shape to volunteer to take on an orphan.

All I have are the tears in my eyes, wrenched loose like lava from a volcano in my heart, forced out by moving platelets in my soul.

And I have words --- God's given me so many words and I can't even find the right ones.

I'm watching all these beautiful, talented people on the "Help for Haiti" marathon tonight. I'm so old and out of touch, I only recognize a few faces, a few names.

Who are these folks? God bless them, they're so attractive, so intense, so talented, so sincere. Reese Witherspoon. She's an actress. She's talking to some voice on the phone who sounds embarrassed to be speaking to her. Well, God bless them both. Him for donating money. Her for donating time.

Some man is singing, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child." A man who runs a Haitian orphanage that collapsed says that there was only room for so many motherless children BEFORE the earthquake. He said BEFORE the earthquake, they were turning away 80 orphans a day for lack of space. And now that number is doubling, tripling, quadrupling ...

I became a motherless child, an orphan at 49, nearly 10 years ago. I cried with grief and pain and outrage then and I still do. Can you imagine having to start that type of grieving at age six, age seven, age eight, in a country that's lost nearly all its resources, that is so overwhelmed that no one can think of helping anyone but themselves, let alone a small child?

An impoverished nation full of impoverished, orphaned children.

Kid Rock, Sheryl Crowe and Keith Urban are singing "Lean On Me," a really good version. This concert will go down as the Woodstock of 2010. It has that feel to it.

I wish I could still sing. I would go out and sing for Haiti, collect coins in a hat and give them to the Red Cross. But I can't sing anymore. Singing makes me cry.

So I write. I put words together in sentences and post them online hoping that someone with disposable income will give some kind of assistance to the Haitian orphans; to the littlest babies and to the oldest orphans on the island, the senior citizens whose nursing home collapsed, leaving them with no place to die a natural death but out on the streets.

It's all I got. Just words. The people of Haiti can have them all if it will help. I hope somebody reads this and writes a check to help the orphans of Haiti, old and young.


I'm an orphan, too, with not much to show for my years of life,but it's OK. They can have my share, and all my words, if it will help.