why are we at war?/norman mailer
when i consider the nearly three thousand people who died in the twin towers disaster, it's not the ones who were good fathers and good mothers and good daughters, good brothers and good husbands or sons, that i mourn most. it's the ones who came from families that were less happy.
when a good family member dies, there's a tenderness and a sorrow that can restore life to those who are left behind. but when someone dies who is half loved and half hated by his own family, whose children, for example, are always trying to get closer to that man or to that woman and don't quite succeed, then the aftereffect is obsessive. those are the ones who are hurt the most.
i won't call them dysfunctional families, but it's into the less successful families that terrorism bites most deeply. because there is that terrible woe that one can't speak to the dead parent or the dead son or daughter or dead mate; one can't set things right anymore.
one was planning to, one was hoping to, and now it's lost forever. that makes it profoundly obsessive.
dad died alone saturday. and we didn't know until the afternoon. and we weren't able to see the body until this morning. a breakdown in communication between the police department and the hospital meant no one contacted us and who knows how long it would have been had we not found out by accidental chance.
until seeing him cold and blue on that table this morning, i would cry and then laugh:
how morbid and wonderful would it be if he walked in the door--somehow lost, confused, and delightfully healthy--to find us all there wearing white, weeping, wailing, praying...mourning his death?
i was planning to. i was hoping to. and now it's lost forever. but i don't have any regrets, so i hope it fails to become profoundly obsessive.
