It’s been a tumultuous few days. Such a variety of events have occurred that I find it difficult to focus. I want to organize the details, make them merge into something cohesive and clear, but instead they play in my mind like some discordant orchestra whose sounds refuse to blend.
It began on Easter Sunday with a call from my sister, her tearful words filling my ears, “Baby Noah is dead!” His drug-abusing mother, the daughter of my sister’s partner, had left him alone in the bathtub. One day after his first birthday. This mother and her live-in boyfriend had met in rehab and had begun co-habiting and making babies even before they’d put their own fractured lives back into order. Now they face arrest and two other children have been removed from their custody. And yet they seem unwilling to accept responsibility for what they’ve done, even as their lawyer builds their defense against a system that should rightly punish them for this crime of negligence and narcissism but perhaps never will.
These unspeakable things happen, but how can I write of them? I don’t know how to begin.
On Wednesday those awful tornadoes set upon Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee and swept a 200 mile long swath across my own home state of Alabama, making history while killing 340 people and leaving hundreds of others missing amidst the overwhelming destruction.
I want to write about this somehow, to make the pain and loss more bearable, but where are the words?
The following day a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses came knocking on our door and wound up engaged with my partner in a lengthy discussion about God and how, if He does exist and is the good and loving God he is purported to be, He can allow such tragedies to happen. But this pair, sweet old ladies dressed in straw hats and bright ankle length skirts and with speech heavily laced with Caribbean accents, would not have their faiths shaken.
Which started me thinking about people who believe passionately in a deity whose existence has never been proven. While at the same time demanding proof of the citizenship of a man who stands before them, the president of their country, having already provided such proof. People who believe conspiracy theories and lies – none of which is based on solid or tangible evidence. Yet who in this case, having been stirred to a frenzy by an egotistical bone-head, demand proof.
Because on top of everything else, the media had spent days lavishing Donald Trump with undue attention, allowing him to show himself the fool we already knew he was. The one good thing, if there can be a good thing, about the tornadoes is that they took the media’s attention away from that despicable man, his self-adoration and his lies.
I want to write of this, to use the page as my soap box, asking people to look into their hearts and think before they believe the bile one man spews. But I cannot. There would be no point.
On Friday we viewed the CNN coverage of Britain’s dramatic royal wedding. Juxtaposed in sharp contrast to the images of destruction in the American south, it seemed almost surreal and, in many ways, shamefully decadent.
It would be nice to write about how so many people still cherish the magic of a fairy tale wedding. But I can’t. My heart is too burdened by the shameful inequalities of life on this planet.
Saturday and Sunday I watched as neighbors came and went from the house across the street where a gigantic yard sale was being held. Adult children selling the collections of their parents’ 65 years of living there. It’s a small cottage, gray with white trim, black shutters, a magnificent stone chimney, a split-rail fence. But it has been sold and will be demolished to make way for something big, modern and pretentious. This is the trend all over our little town. Our neighborhood was once nothing but beach cottages and summer homes, rich with personality and history. Young home buyers have no respect for this. What they want instead is to flaunt their wealth, and they do, even as the unique history of our town disappears in the dust. There are 3 cottages left on our street. One of them is ours. We’d like to put money into some renovations, but we know it will be money lost – when we are gone, this too will be a tear-down.
I want to write about this trend they call progress. But how can I when I am at a loss to explain it, even to myself?
Sunday night Osama bin Laden was overtaken by a team of brave American soldiers who swept into his secret compound and shot him dead. As soon as the news was out, celebrations began all over the world. I can’t explain why, but I don’t feel like celebrating. It does not seem right to me to celebrate the death of another human, even one as patently evil and deserving of a horrible death as this man. Though I am as happy as anyone that he is finally gone. What I hope is that al Qaida – the malignancy that remains although the tumor has been removed – will see now how outnumbered and hated they are and will just slink into a corner somewhere to die a natural death. But already the world gears up instead for the retaliation that is sure to follow their leader’s assassination. Because these people believe in revenge with as much passion as they believe that killing innocents will guarantee them reward in the hereafter.
I want to write this essay. But first I want to understand these things. Why it is OK to dance at the death of a monster. Or why we allow the dismantling of history for the sake of tawdry improvement. Why we live amidst such shameful extremes of poverty and wealth. Why there are egos so huge their owners fail to realize the fools they make of themselves with their own hubris. Why people’s belief that there is a God who loves them will not be shattered. And how people can risk the lives of their children to indulge their own pleasures.
To write about these things, I need to understand them. Otherwise, I don’t know where to begin.
