Crushing hope

The worst crime we adults commit is not murder or theft or the bodily harm of another. It’s crushing the hope and dreams of children, particularly those who look to us as members of their immediate and extended families and to whom they look as role models and guides.

It’s tragic enough when adults lose all hope of a better tomorrow; but, destroying that belief in a better life, a promise of tomorrow among children is unconscionable.

This weekend, we caught a documentary from Appalachia which leaves little room for hope—for parents or their children. Oxyana, a brilliant crowd-funded documentary directed by Sean Dunne, is gut-wrenching in its honest talks and unfiltered intimacy with residents of Oceana, West Virginia, a small town nestled deep in the Appalachian mountains. It is a film which provides very little in the way of hope.

Oceana has been renamed ‘Oxyana’—an indication of just how much of the town has been impacted by oxycontin dependency. Members of the community recount how Oceana was a different place a mere 12 to 15 years ago before oxycontin was commonly prescribed to residents for pain and ‘anxiety’. Now, oxy dependence is epidemic. Person after person tells of their own oxycontin dependence, or the horror of watching their family and friends fall into prescription pill addiction. As one interviewee recounts, no one in the town has been spared the loss of at least one person close to them to overdose. Indeed, one such individual who appears on camera and is incredibly lucid and open about his use and distribution recounts how his own father committed suicide after first killing his wife and other son over what appears to be the mother’s prescription drugs. It’s a rather chilling moment in the film for obvious reasons.

The town’s dentist weeps as he talks of his own girls growing up in a town amongst good people who have no hope. His girls’ friends have lost parents to overdose. And, yet, he remains in the town and tries to hold on to hope for himself and for his girls. A physician from the local hospital explains rather dispassionately of the number of overdose deaths they encounter in the hospital each day (not week) and how 50% of all babies born in the hospital are on methadone to combat the dependency with which they are born.

In the final moments of this compelling documentary, a young woman, herself dependent upon oxycontin for pain and ‘anxiety’ talks of how she just wants a better life for her daughter, for herself. It’s when talking of her daughter that she truly breaks down.

The cycle of poverty, joblessness, and a life in which dope offers an escape from the physical and mental pain provides very little in the way of hope. Dope and a sense of overwhelming despair largely resulting from poverty and hopelessness have a vice-like grip on this small mountain community. If an individual doesn’t work in the mines, they are most likely already dependent upon on oxy. And, so, the cycle continues.

Diane Sawyer, a native of Kentucky, also used the power of journalism in a documentary ‘A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains‘ to bring to the masses the crushing weight of poverty which is characteristic for more than a half million residents of Appalachia and which for most of the rest of America is unimaginable. That she focused on the lives of children in incredibly desperate situations added yet a further blow.

Drug use and dysfunction feature in this second narrative prominently. But, mostly, crushing poverty provides little in the way of hope for a brighter future for any of the children. ‘Faith’ helps one cling to the idea that the future will be better — for her and her troubled mother. Yet, watching, hope is largely absent. As a young girl describes the only two contents of their fridge at times being mayo and ranch, you want to weep. At least I did.

What have we done to leave these communities in such situations? What have done that a physician describes the current generation as the ‘lost generation’? Are they well and truly lost? Or have we and with us they simply lost all hope?

We have failed these communities and more importantly those individuals who despair in such situations. Whilst we have the tools to help them medically, what will we do to assist them medically or socially? Because they are nestled away in an isolated community, will we continue to turn a blind eye and ignore their pain and suffering and relegate it as their problem alone? What message does that convey to the children who live in such situations?

And, what hope are we offering them, any of them? Or, have we simply crushed all hope for Oceana?