Loving to Death
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When Emma – who is in her early thirties – tells me she noticed how most American police TV series have the same formula of the cop being the hero and good guy, I am relieved and thrilled to hear her actively inquiring where the obsession with guns, violence, and mass shootings might partially originate from. How it is secretly embedded everywhere in our culture. The entertainment most of us are happily and innocently digesting. How we are unknowingly brainwashed. Thrilling violence titillates our senses and wakes us up from numbness. Perhaps this kind of entertainment is teaching us all along violent behavior as a normal way to be alive, she wonders. To solve our problems with guns. For me, cop shows are a continuation of the old “Western” mentality. Every Man for Himself with a Gun. (Notice the always gendered association.) Of course, the whiter the hero the better, the villains are always dark. This is the daily food for many, and it is being exported with great success all over the world. It makes money. The gun brings quick solutions, it is sexy and phallic. In America it is the great god, even if it brings death. We like to love to death.
To friends and family overseas, I cannot really explain the daily rampant bursts of terror and violence. It is unthinkable in Western Europe. Now there is a war next door, yes, but it is an openly declared war. In America owning a gun – or better even several weapons made for war – is a religion. It means becoming a vengeful god – all powerful, ruling the world by taking lives. Does not everyone have the right to be god? And the right to kill? More guns than people – I sense so much fear underneath.
Two weeks ago, I get the news that my 54-year-old old step daughter Marya is murdered by her husband who then kills himself. He is a war veteran, keeps his guns in the bedroom. He shoots her three times in the back, each shot deadly by itself. A murder-suicide. In a split second, I feel myself being plunged into an alternate universe – disbelief, shock, terror, pain, grief, fury, sorrow. They all are incapsulated in the silent inner roar of “no, that is not possible!”
And within a few seconds, I realize: how will I share this with others? I live by myself, lost my closest companions to natural death a few years ago, have no family in this country. Am I now left alone in hell? Buried under the rubble of tragedy, unimaginable for most of us. Condemned to stay silent because this is too hard to speak out aloud to others? The violence reverberates through my bones and soul. I can’t let it cripple me. The traumatic consequences for the two grown daughters, the ex-husband, mothers, brothers, all are irreversible. A life snuffed out with one finger’s movement. How easy it is to be god. How much hell and suffering inside the murderer to propel him. The tragedies of the war veterans. The walls in the house will be repaired, but the world won’t be the same, the echoes will only fade very slowly. The shots will be reverberating generations down.
The first days I go on brisk walks so I can feel my fury, red hot, like a volcano. The third day, my heart says loudly: include him in your prayers of light. I obey because what else is there to do. Knowing this demand is not from my head. But will I be able to do it? To my surprise, a bright sphere of light immediately envelopes both of them. My agitation dissipates. Later I include all who suffer from violence, communities, families, all beings. May we know the heart.
For days my left eye is watering as if to say:
“No tears will make this disappear, so I have become a river, a river of sorrow.”
This will be a long road. The shock takes a week to wane. Every morning I wake and confirm that this really did happen. The violence came to my door steps. In a country that is not at war, remarks the post-world-war-two child in me. The exact same thing is happening in America to several hundred people every day: murders – suicides – by guns. They are big business in a country quietly at war with itself. The shooters are victims themselves, like in any war. Everyone says to me: “The guns will never be banned.” Nowhere else in the world, are there more guns than people. Guns are more sacred than people. In the name of self-defense – and the all-pervasive fear gathers momentum, keeps rippling out... when what we really need is deep courage.
I admire the flaming sunsets, the delicate blossoms, ephemeral and eternal... and I ask for mercy for all of us.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081
Loving to Death. Deeply sorry for your loss. Supremely tragic for all who surrounded Marya.
ReplyDeleteMy dear Papa who was a child psychologist was very worried about the future of children on this Earth. He felt that playing violent video games would desensitize them...indeed we see it, hear it and now know it to be true. May Maryas' memory be a blessing.
Oh Karina, I am so sorry for what you are going through. I know how deeply you sense and see and to have to bear such terrible violence so close to you. Your words are true on all levels. There is a strength in them their clarity and forthrightness that confront and address the violence without being violent.
ReplyDeleteKarina, I read your words, your prayers. From a place in me that has been numb for who knows how long, I feel anger, horror, pain, grief. Some part of me knows that this is not normal, that what you are experiencing is a tragedy beyond anything imaginable. This part of me is so sad, so angry that this violence came to your door steps, as you are so precious to me. Some other part of me is numb to your tragedy, numbed by the endless casual violence all around me. I pray for sensitivity for myself and for everyone living in this backwards culture. I pray for you and for your family, that you may have courageous people around you, especially now.
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DeleteThank you, for your comment and prayers. I decided i cannot let this be silent. Because all of us are going to need courage.... the heart is wondrous place to be and live from...
My friend Laurie is allowing me to share her comment with a relevant memory, see below:
ReplyDeleteKarina, Your post is incredibly touching…as always. I don’t know how you begin to process the loss over time...
America’s fascination with guns makes me remember a photo of me at 3 playing with a toy gun, my brother and I loved to play cowboys, we watched the Lone Ranger on TV, I had a holster that was way too big for my tiny body. I was always a tomboy, being a cowboy was part of that, and the gun was as much a part of the costume as the hat. Our family never had guns, yet as little kids in America having one was a “normal” part of play in the 1950s. Now with so many real deadly guns out there, it’s like PFAS forever chemicals…undetectable landmines we’ll never be able to get rid of.
Karina, I am so sorry for your awful loss.
ReplyDeleteSo sorry for your loss. This gun and violence madness must end.
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