Word Count: 251
When his first child was born, his first son, he was thousands of miles away. Doing the right thing for humanity, helping rebuild a nation torn to strips of thin fragments by civil war. The people, broken but shining like sequins on a black velvet earth.
When his second came screaming her way into the world he was an ocean away in Japan. An earthquake, a resulting tsunami, a shoreline battered by water and the air layered in death.
He was there when his oldest hit high school. Missed his daughter’s first steps, first dance recital, and so many more.
Was hunkered down as the bombs blew the buildings around him. Missed the bombs and the crash of his son’s first car.
Flew back in for a month after the funeral. Flew back out where he felt people needed him more. What is one, when compared to so many? he explained to himself.
The divorce papers reached him too late to contest. Jungle travel is slow in the best of times, mail often lost. His daughter was hit by a drunk driver on her first day of school. No airports within miles, no roads left to get there. He cried and screamed out but the next day took care of the wounded and hungry and hurt.
It came time when he no longer could help them. He himself damaged and empty of pain. He came back to a place he’d thought of as home. But home was as barren as he.
This has a muted, internal screaming horror, one that increases because the one reminds that many similar others exist, on many scales, and then there is the realisation that we all make these sort of decisions – to be or not to be there – all the time, and even if they are are all good, all justifiable, it is almost inevitable that you are also letting someone down. That is the ‘horror’ of life – that we only have one. Really profound this one Susan.
Yes, Sandra, and we can only do what we can to make a difference in someone’s life, to face our limitations and focus on where we are needed the most. Otherwise we’re scattered like buckshot. What precipitated this whole train of thought was the implication that we felt we had an entitlement to grief over 9/11 while so much of the world over was suffering. I’d say it doesn’t diminish all tragedy to focus for a day on something that’s touched us. I’d say that I don’t think we’re capable of crying for all humanity or we couldn’t go on. We could go back to the Holocaust, every war, way back to Attila the Hun and the grief has to lessen at some point. That the death of one single person is as worthy of sorrow as the loss of a hundred.
The above probably makes me look like a horribly selfish person but I don’t really have the words to explain it. I’ve seen people who scream that we should all help people halfway across the world and yet they will pass by the street beggar without seeing him. What I’m saying I guess, is reach out to those you can help in the most human way.
There is also the need to be sure your caring, your grief where it is honest. No-one can truly feel grief for everyone, and for one find it hard to be that geniunely, feelingly sorry about a lot of what are considered major tragedies – what difference will my grief make, really? But sometime you find yourself hit really hard about, s you say, the tragedy of one single person, then you feel it may be possible to make a difference.
But in fact I read this piece differently, from a more domestic point of view, from the point of view, I suppose, (although this is not my story) of a wife whose husband commited to marriage, family (and presumably he was arond long enough to inseminate his wife) but then opted out to a far greater extent than was reasonable.
(and if this reads as tosh, put it down to two large glasses of red and getting ready to go on holiday in the morning – to Orkney)
No, you make sense. There are people who are more capable of putting their love and efforts towards a purpose, group, a need, and others who are better at one-on-one commitments. Whether for happiness or for grieving, everybody’s wired differently and we need to follow our instincts and just do the best that we can. In the story above, he probably should have not committed to a wife and family because he really couldn’t give them what they needed from him. Giving himself to so many others not only helped the larger group, but gave him the most satisfaction as well.