My Empathy

"A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us.  To live is to be slowly born." French aviator and author Antoine de Saint Exupéry

I was in seventh grade in March of 1998 when Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden shot 15 people at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro, Arkansas.  Four students and a teacher died.  

I was just about to enter high school in the spring of 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and one teacher and shot another 21 people at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado. 

I was a senior in college when Seng-Hui Cho systematically murdered 32 people at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. 

I was married to a deployed soldier and spending a lot of time on an Army Base in November 2009 when Nidal Hassan shot and killed 13 people and wounded 29 others at Fort Hood in Texas. 

And now this.

Even though I've never been to Norway and I'm not a teenager at summer camp, I can't help but feel, the way I've felt for these other victims, for the people of a country whose peace has been shattered in such a senseless and cruel manner.  It's the kind of terrifying event that brings all those other memories that have been hovering, blurry, on the edges of my mind back in sharp focus.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this.  I guess I’m in a dark and twisty mood.  I suppose I just want to impress upon the world how much my generation has violence embedded into our collective memories.  I grew up this way…with metal detectors and early-warning systems and shooting spree safety protocol.  Like the old adage “duck and cover” from the Cold War but somehow much more sinister, we spent afternoons in high school practicing covering the window in the classroom door and locking it, shutting off the lights and building a sturdy barricade of chairs and desks to shield us from bullets.   

Do our parents understand what that’s like?  Going to school every day knowing it’s possible someone among your peers wants you to bleed to death on chipped tile? 

Is it dramatic for me to say I felt the pain of these children, these young men and women, from hundreds or even thousands of miles away?  I did.  I wept and I forgot to eat and I couldn’t sleep for the nightmares of running feet and endless hallways and screaming pleas that haunted me.  It hurt so badly.  The anguish of strangers who lived just like I did broke something inside me...each and every time. 

This kind of human connection is a powerful and bewildering thing.  Is it an evolutionary trait designed to promote survival of the species?  Is it a gift from a Higher Power to ease the pain of loneliness in an ever-expanding universe?  Is it the result of individual brain chemistry and should be considered merely a personality quirk?  Is it all of those things or something we have yet to define? 

I have no answers.

Bad News

Our latest piece of news...My Husband's best friend and college roommate's dad has been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.  The doctors pretty much told him he can have six months or less without chemotherapy and maybe a year with it.

As if that doesn't suck enough, said roommate is getting married on Memorial Day weekend.  So basically that could be the last time their entire family gets together.  And of course, now the wedding isn't really about the couple anymore.  Every happy event in the next few years (his sister's wedding, their first baby, etc.) is gonna be marred by the fact his dad is gone.

I'm so sad for them in this entire situation.  And it makes me think about losing My Husband.  It doesn't take much to make me think about losing My Husband, what with the line of work he's in, but this definitely does it.

And because I wouldn't be me without that selfish little voice in the back of my head, I'm disappointed the wedding has taken on an entirely different tone.  This is my first non-family wedding and my first with My Husband (minus our own).  And I have to tell you, our wedding wasn't all wine and roses.

The pressure for perfection was intense.  My father continually lamented how much it was costing him and screamed at me regularly to vent his frustration.  My sisters were only sporadically involved, being busy with their own lives.  My mother continually reminded me to be grateful.  My parents invited a married couple to the wedding in exchange for them re-sodding the front lawn.  My Husband was gone all day Friday and late for the rehearsal dinner because of his second bachelor party in Boston the Thursday night.  He was late for the ceremony Saturday afternoon because his older brother took 90 minutes to get ready and then stopped to fill his empty gas tank before taking the wrong highway to the church.  And a million other little things.

So I was excited for this wedding...I had no worries, I new exactly how to be helpful to the bride, groom and their families and there was absolutely no pressure.  Sweet deal.  Now that's all gone and I have no idea how to act when we get there.

Besides that, I feel terrible for the bride because she isn't the focus of her own wedding day and she's got a way better reason for it than I ever did.  I want to write her a letter or something...let her know I know she'll be worried about her fiance and his family, but that it's OK to take a few minutes to say, "This is about me and my husband-to-be."  I don't want her to start off her marriage with resentment.

But then again, that may be crossing a boundary.  I've only met her once, and I've only met My Husband's roommate and handful more times.  So maybe I should just mind my own business.  As empathetic as I am to the situation, I don't know what it's like to watch your father and father-in-law die in the months just after your wedding and I don't want to be...what's a good word?  Nosy?  Pushy?  Opinionated?

Thinking about this makes my head hurt.