Honea Express

Archive for the ‘death’ Category

I have no idea who you are.

I shake your hand. I read your blog. I laugh at your jokes over beers and football. We chat during chance meetings at random places in a random world full of near misses and perfect timing. Your kids and my kids play together. Your parents know mine. We were classmates. We worked in the same office. We slept together. You sang in the choir. We’re friends on Facebook. You saved her life.

We are all walking shades and notes of choices and the places we’ve been and the places we’ll go. We share memories. We tell stories. I remember you. I saw you this morning. We’ve lived in the moment and we lost touch years ago.

You know everything about me. You know the highlights and skimmed the details. I saw you at a bar and we nodded with a smile. We couldn’t remember our names.

I read your obituary and regretted it all. You’ll visit this summer and we’ll go to the beach. Please, tell your sister that I said hello.

Life is filled with a cast of thousands. There are masses in the marketplace. There is crying in the library. I heard a song on the subway. Dinner was fantastic.

I miss you and I am sick of your shit.

You are complex and incredible with legs like wine. Society only scratches on the surface. Everyone has secrets and dreams and something worth knowing. Nobody understands me. I can’t find my coat.

Come in and know me better, man.

I have no idea who you are. It is time that we changed that.

“I want to show you something,” I said. “It’s not a kid thing.”

The boys were in their pajamas and whatever they were watching was full of smiles and hugs and had been sanitized for their protection. I turned on CNN and started a conversation that I had long avoided. Their eyes were on the screen behind me and they widened as they took in images that they couldn’t comprehend — images that have haunted the rest of us for nearly ten years.

“I’m showing this to you because this is history, and someday you may want to remember where you were when it happened. Assuming you want to remember it at all. I want you to know what is happening.”

And then I started to justify actions to my children that went against all of the words I had ever told them.

I explained to them that a man was dead and that he deserved it. I compared him to the villains from their storybooks. I compared him to Hitler. I told them that he had done evil things for evil reasons and that his death was a means to help end those deeds.

I said that many people would feel a sense of relief. That many people would feel a sense of joy.  I explained the concept of closure.

Hanging in the air was an unspoken thought, a quote from The Iron Giant that had been repeated often in our home, usually by me:

It is bad to kill, but it is not bad to die.

I could say that and I could believe it, because I knew how to make exceptions to the rule. I left that part out. I also left out the part about how many of the people they know and trust would have killed this same man with their own hands had the opportunity presented itself. I left out that I may be one of them.

“Why are the people singing?” asked my oldest son long after his brother had gone to bed.

I didn’t answer him. I saw what the people were doing. On some level I understood it. However, the death of one evil man in a world of evil men did not inflate my patriotic pride with song, rather it emphasized my silence. I thought of the losses our country has suffered over the past ten years, the lives, time and money that have been wasted. It reminded me that things are far from over.

“I know why they sing,” he said. And then he fell against my lap, first quiet, then asleep.  The TV stayed on for hours. Their song carried on the night like a lullaby.

I was born in Tucson, Arizona. I lived in the area for over 28 years. I ran barefoot through the green-spotted desert as it turned from the square quilts of cotton fields to the oval patches of over-watered golf courses. I rode my bike on gravel-lined dirt roads that grew overnight into car-filled highways. I shot a BB gun in my front yard and waved at passersby, calling to each by name.  I remember when that Dairy Queen was the only thing out there.

The majority of my youth was spent in Marana, a town just north of the city that my family helped to settle and govern. My father has served the town of Marana through seats on the council, and now as the mayor, for over 30 years. Unlike the indigenous vegetation in the area, the roots of my family have grown thick and deep into the clay-baked soil of the Sonoran Desert.

I attended the University of Arizona and graduated without honors. Somebody has to. I met my wife on two-for-one night in a bar just off campus. I was drunk on whiskey, and I’m still hearing about it.

Many of my family and friends remain, meaning my ties to Tucson are more than just margaritas and sunsets, although both are fantastic.

I grew up in a conservative home. The earliest jokes that I can remember had Jimmy Carter as a punchline. We went to church every Sunday, and on holidays my uncles would sit in the shade of my grandparents’ porch, sip iced tea and wrap themselves in layers of racism, homophobia and laughter. I didn’t know innocence from ignorance, and I laughed just as hard as they did, happy but to be there.

My parents taught me things that transcended politics. They taught me how to be happy with very little money, and how to treat people with respect, courtesy and humor.  They never suggested that I consider violence as an option, and when I outgrew religion they never tried to tether me to it.

Ours was built firmly on trust and understanding.

I left Tucson as an adult, and although I’ve returned for weddings and funerals, each visit made it more and more clear, you can’t go home again.

It used to be the heat that kept me away.

And then technology went forward as technology is prone to do, and suddenly I found myself looking into metaphorical windows, staring into a world that I had left behind — a world where many never noticed that other paths diverged, and so they continued along the only way that they had ever known, easy and slow and bending forever backward. The path most traveled is paved without thought, and it has made all the difference.

I found that I missed it less and less.

Days ago a young girl was shot and killed. A judge joined her. The tally rose to six innocents dead and many others wounded. The target had been a congresswoman, full of courage and reason.  The shooter had been a boy, full of madness and confusion.

I blame the line between fear and reason. It zigs where we are told that it should zag.

Of the victims, know that their story is not here. I am not qualified to write words on the victims or their loved ones. I cannot comprehend the depths of their loss, nor will I cheapen their memories by attempting to do so. Just know that I grieve like we all grieve. I anger like we all anger. I can only wish things weren’t as they are and think thoughts of better days for those they’ve left behind.

I once thought of Tucson as a beacon of light in a state of gray and darkness, but in the years since my absence I have watched it grow overcast and haunted. Or, I thought, perhaps I am only now seeing how it has always been.

That’s not to say that there are not stars there. They are many, and I reflect upon them fondly. But the night is bold, loud and howling. It twists words like the wind and wrings sweat from the brows of the misguided. It is spreading swiftly.

I feared that the Tucson I knew, or thought that I did, was on the verge of disappearing forever.

And yet, the stars shine brighter but for the darkness.

Last night I watched a memorial for the fallen. The president spoke. My father was in the stands. There were tears as far as the eye could see.

For the first time in a long time I saw a glimpse of what I once took for granted. What has always been there, only hidden too often by levels of bureaucracy and the sad fact that ignorance and hate sell more papers than rational quotes and the good deeds of everyday people.  Amid the pain and loss of a country I saw the courage and strength of a city, and from its collective diversity came a roar of passion that the media couldn’t comprehend. I saw Tucson’s heart and it was sad, but strongly beating.

For the first time in a long time I saw the place that I used to know.

I saw Tucson, and it felt like home.

By the time I reached the Tin Man my heart had already been found, touched and smashed to bits.  It was all lacks of brain and courage.

The morning sky was framed with clouds, the morning ground was wet from rain, and the morning paper was full of ads and sadness. I could save 10% off new releases or I could look an inch to the left and read about a 2-year-old child beaten to death by his father. The man wore his gloves laced tight and placed punch after punch to the head of his son.  He claimed he was trying to teach the boy the art of the sweet science.  It landed like a sour ton of bricks, a haymaker from hell.

The news is page after page of death after death and a baseball team that is gasping for breath.  Also, it’s time for back to school savings.

We are all heroes and victims and fodder for the pressing.  We are all clowns.  We are all crying on the inside.  We are all interested in wines on sale.

My Sunday morning head is full of a Saturday night bottle. My coffee cup seats two comfortably.  There is a bird at the window and he tilts his gaze, knowingly.  Quoth Wonka: We are the music-makers and the dreamers of the dream. We show no signs of slowing.

There was a small article about Jack Haley, the actor who portrayed the Tin Man so many years ago.  He is long since gone.  As I read the piece I felt something stir and a need to stop and listen.  Somewhere Over the Rainbow was playing and the timing was both odd and perfect. I sat there with the paper in my lap, memories of coffee heavy on my breath and a view that included hills and mountains and a bird in the window.  The morning sky was full of countless drops of sunshine falling lazily across stretching fields and flowers slowly waking. The morning sky was full of Blue Angels, rainbows and the birds to fly over them.

I stood there and watched it for as long as I could.

The Christmas lights weren’t going to hang themselves. The box of lights, staples and some plastic clips designed to adhere electrical wires to the overflowing gutters had been working as a doorstop for days. It was time they earned their keep. Besides, it wasn’t getting any warmer.

The overnight low had been in the single digits. The high wasn’t even old enough to drink. I finished my second pot of coffee and like Griswald before me I plugged into the season.

I stood on a ladder made of ice. Visions of sugarplums breaking their necks danced in my head. I was, for a moment, glad that my children were not there to see it. But I lived and I am lit and I never even touch the stuff.

Today I woke to another sunny, frozen morning. Yellow-breasted robins appeared outside my window. A number of blue jays bounced from branch to branch and perched upon the rail in front of me – their colors vibrant and brisk.

They put the lights to shame.

If I stand on my rooftop I can see a lake and hills and then another lake and hills again. Beyond that, blocked from view, is a skyline that falls into the sea and a coast that leads south to a place where my family can’t see the ocean but for the mountains between them.

It’s mostly side streets from there.

The boys play loudly on a floor with the toys that they packed themselves. There are no holiday lights or signs of the season. There are no stockings or carols or television specials, just the gift that they don’t know they are giving.

In the corner of the room there is a bed with their grandfather in it, watching them play and whispering their names and every new goodnight is their last goodbye.