Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Consoling Words


I wrote this last year, probably in late February.


Everyone has their words of consolation, their way of making sense of the accident in 5 sentences or less.
  1. It was an ACCIDENT
  2. IT WASN’T YOUR FAULT
  3. It could have happened to anyone
  4. These accidents happen all the time
  5. Other people have survived worse traumas.
  6. People tell you not to feel bad because there’s always someone who’s got it worse.  But whatever you are suffering, you are in it, and your personal experience needs to be respected and felt for what it is
  7. It’s about karma.  When a series of bad things happen to you, you need to examine it and change your karma
  8. Tragedies and difficulties happen in order to teach you, to push you to a higher spiritual plane.  Since so many big bad things have happened to you you must have an advanced soul
  9. Tragedies push us to take stock, to consider why.  I strongly urge you to pray, and to pray to Jesus Christ our savior.
  10. My daughter’s whole class at school prayed for you, and for the two sisters.
  11. We’re all praying for you
  12. You are a good person, with a good heart, who never wanted to hurt anyone, and after this accident you are still the same good person.

Yet the mother said to my attorney, You want justice for Jessica?  What about justice for my two daughters?

Sunday, January 17, 2010

17 Days

Today is January 17, 2010.  It is 17 days until the first anniversary of the Accident.
 I am starting to feel an inexorable pull
on the fluids in my body,
as though a different source of gravity is affecting me
 a sort of tide rising

 I can't stop the days from passing
In 17 days I will wake up, it will be a Wednesday
Once again, there will be nothing I can do to stop what happened.

The liquid in my body seeping into my lungs
inevitability
will there be a memorial in Managua?  of course there will be.
remembering, mourning
i see my body lying in the dirt next to theirs
how much have their bodies decomposed?
how much have I decomposed?
damp leaves
ants
plastic bags blowing across the cemetery
soft rain