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11 march 2002

the second half of the whitestrips review. snazz up yer pearlies for spring.

degrees of separation

So I call Dad on Sunday night to say howdy. We chat about how the past week has gone. Then, we begin to chat about the recent spate of really horrifying news headlines, particularly the nurse's aide who hit the homeless man, and the Andrea Yates case. Then Dad asks, "you know that crematorium where they found all those bodies?

"Yeah, that's not far from you, is it?

"It's four miles away from here."

DAAA-AAAAAAAD! Gah!

As it turns out, a few members of my extended family are (unfortunately) too-well-acquainted with this case. If you live overseas, or in a burrow here in the States, a Georgia crematorium was recently discovered to have NOT CREMATED over 250 people. Hundreds of bodies are being found "out back". I don't want to know what "out back" means, but it's not good. The point is, people entrusted their dearly departed to this place, and they ended up being dumped in what amounts to a creekbed in the Georgia mountains. Awful stuff.

So anyway, you have to know one thing about my Dad, which is that he's one of the most even-tempered people you could care to meet. He doesn't get visibly excited about much, one way or the other. Nothing phases him, or at least not to the point where you'd notice. He's good in emergencies, except where there's a family member's blood involved, then he passes out...but I digress...

He tells me, very calmly, about his family members that happen to be involved in the case. His brother-in-law is the presiding judge. His wife, my stepmother, is one of the clerks of court who has to write up all these awful arrest warrants and criminal reports. Has her job been a little stressful lately? Yes, YOU COULD SAY SO. People magazine has been in the offices, covering the story. Press is crawling all over the place. It's a fairly rural area. You notice out-of-towners, especially those with cameras who are asking a lot of questions.

I have to admit that I don't watch the news; I read it, or hear it on NPR, which is probably worse. Recently, I feel like I know too much about events in which I'd rather know nothing. I have a tough time acknowledging the dark side of humanity, but recent events haven't given me much choice but to face it. Just because it's not in my town doesn't mean that it's far away.

I've recently befriended someone rather exceptional, who happens to be an army warrant officer. (To you and me, this would mean "pilot".) I think I can safely say that September 11 imposed upon all of our lives with visceral authority, and then, we began to watch everything being taken care of by someone else. We were in the clear, right? We're covered. We sent a small number of troops over.

Then, we began to lose a few boys.

And then, the pilot e-mailed me with news that one of his friends had been shot down in Afghanistan. He is surviving. They think he'll recover from his shrapnel wounds. Some of his colleagues weren't so fortunate.

Later that day, I was listening to All Things Considered, and the newscaster gave the names of the two surviving NC men who had been shot down in that helicopter.

I think you guys know me a little by now. I don't have trouble putting much into words. These days, the words aren't coming so easily. All I know is that my Gramma and my Mom were about my age, in their own uncertain times. As much as I tried, I could never quite "get" when they would talk about what went through their minds, or the events in their lives, during WWII and Vietnam. You just never imagine that your generation might one day have a memorial wall, too.

Four miles. One degree of separation, once. One degree of separation, twice.

This is how I will describe it to the next generation.