I’ll never forget the lesson I learned years ago when I was called to a murder scene as a very young funeral director. I walked up to the grown son of the victim that night and in a very reassuring manner I put my hand on his shoulder and said these words, “I am so sorry this has happened. I know how you feel.” He looked at me with fire in his eyes and said something to me I never forgot. He said, “You don’t have a clue how I feel.”
He was correct. I did not have a clue how he felt and I made matters worse by acting like I did. At that point I had never lost my dad. And I certainly had never had a parent murdered. I learned a valuable lesson that night. I can tell you I never made that comment again.
But what I have thought about many times during my lifetime in the funeral business is that it seems to me that the loss of a child may be the worst thing a parent can go through. I don’t know that for sure because I have never lost a child but I have walked a lot of people through the funeral process that resulted. In other words I have seen their pain close up. I can only imagine what these parents really experience.
As I have watched the events at Virginia Tech unfold this week, I have been consumed with thoughts of what these parents must be going through. I cannot even comprehend it. Can you imagine having a son or a daughter in college attending an institution like Virginia Tech and having their live snuffed out in an instant by some obsessed madman while in their classroom?
I really don’t know how they are even able to breathe or take the next step. I can't even imagine. I really don’t have a clue what they are really going through.
And in the midst of that pain can you imagine every time they turn the TV on or look at a newspaper there are pictures of this madman who killed their child with the guns in his hands staring at them? And there are even videos of this nut saying whatever he is saying. This killer sent those pictures and the videos for a reason. He wanted to continue to torment these families from the grave. And he wanted to become famous. The media is playing right into his hands. They are allowing him to continue to torment and they have made him known all over the world.
This madman does not deserve the notoriety. And the families do not deserve the insensitivity. And who knows what ideas these pictures and videos are giving to other crazed people who are on the edge.
Of this I am certain. Our nation’s thoughts and prayers and focus should be on the kids who died and on the broken families, friends and classmates they left behind.
And the focus should not be on the satanic madman that caused it.
Somebody does not have a clue.
4 comments:
AMEN!
I was physically sick to my stomach when I saw the picture of the gunman on the front of the macon telegraph yesterday pointing his gun at the camera. I started crying when it hit me that there were 32 people whose last image in this world was that. I then became enraged that the newspaper would be so insensitive as to publish that horrible picture. I know what it is like to have a good friend murdered as a college student by a mad man with a gun. It was the worst day of my life and reliving the horrors of it afterward was awful. Family and friends and our country need sensitivity in this situation on the part of the media. My heart breaks for their families and friends. Because with the friends, I do know in part what they are going through.
I enjoy your writing. You put into words what has been in my heart and mind for days. I have begun to turn the channel when I am confronted with more about the gunman. (Which seems to be constantly.) I know all I can really do is pray for these parents and the friends these students left behind.
I was astonished by the superficiality of the psychological profiles of the so-called experts analyzing the 1800 word manifesto mailed to NBC by the Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui. It's easy to dismiss these actions as psychotic delusions of grandeur from an individual who had lost touch with reality and ranted against rich kids and religion, but it seems to me they are missing the huge clues that are hidden in plain sight. I have been unable to find any information about Cho's family other than the fact that they moved to the US when he was 8.
But it was clear that Cho's anger and rage had been repressed for a long time, something we often see with a conjunction of Mars (aggression) to both Saturn (repression) and Pluto (power struggles) such as Cho had in his astrological chart. The fact that he didn't speak to anyone at school is quite revealing, as is the fact that after being questioned by police for "bugging" a coed with instant messages (communication) he became suicidal. His only efforts at communication came via his writings. Plays that he wrote in class talked of a pedophilic stepfather that that killed his father. At the end, the boy kills the stepfather.
News people and so-called professional psychologists and FBI profilers have taken Cho's video rants at face value, saying they are directed at all of us, at rich kids, at no one in particular. But it seems to me the messages are quite clear.
The name on the return label of the package sent to NBC and found in his dorm room is Ismail Ax. Ismail, or Ishmael, was the illegitimate son of Abraham. Abraham, who favored his son Isaac, and later became a hero of the Islamic religion, sent Ishmael away. I wonder if the "Ax" could be "X" as in "Malcolm X." Members of the Nation of Islam discarded their "slave names" and took the last name "X" to show that they were a people without a homeland. The combination of these two names denotes an individual who is a creature outside of his family, outside of his people. On a sign-in sheet at a school event where other students wrote their name, Cho instead put a question mark.
The alienation experienced by Asian youth who call themselves "generation 1.5" has been widely documented, and if Cho lived with his mother, a brutal stepfather and a new family that would have added to his sense of alienation. As in so many of these cases, Cho and his family are described as "quiet"
Perhaps the rants on the video Cho sent to NBC are really for his parents, for his stepfather with whom he appears to be obsessed. Perhaps it was his desperation for their attention and rage at being muzzled and ignored that ignited the flame of his rage, and in its enormity that rage became subsumed into a general rage at everyone he encountered. When emotions become that powerful in an individual they can no longer be focused merely at the original target and bleed into daily life.
No amount of understanding can ever excuse an action that is hurtful to another, but perhaps we can learn something from understanding the role that abuse can play in the lives of young people.
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