A Minute of Silence!

At the end of the Jim Lehrer show on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, during a minute of silence, Lehrer displayed the pictures of five soldiers who had died in Afghanistan.  None of the men were more than 23, most were younger.  I've watched Lehrer often enough to have seen other pictures, of other men, who also died in Afghanistan, without having had the same extreme reaction of sadness and anger.  I wondered why I cried after this particular broadcast, then realized it was because of a report that day from my doctor that my CT scan was negative for cancer.  It was a huge relief knowing I would not die any time soon.

I've lived a full life, was happily married for close to 30 years, travelled and lived in Europe, taught at the City University, worked in business with success, have had two novels published, and lost my beloved husband three years ago to cancer.  So, shouldn't I be ready to die, to acknowledge that I've had my time in the sun, to give over to a younger generation?  But I'm not ready, nor are most people my age.  In the end, life is all we have, and we want to grab hold of every last minute.   I still rail against the universe that took my beautiful Miguel at 57, when he had so much talent, and so much left to do.  So, how do the families of these five very young soldiers deal with the horror of their deaths?  What sense does it make, what rhyme or reason?

None!  Absolutely none!  Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes thinking about war and the reasons we go to war, knows full well that these five young men died for no reason, for no cause, and that their deaths serve no purpose.  We know this, yet we get on with our lives, every day, shopping, eating, drinking, making love, raising families, working jobs, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, as though it were perfectly natural that so many are dying around the world to feed our war machine.  And when we do think about it, we comfort ourselves by concluding that we're not responsible for their deaths, that we didn't vote for the man who could have brought them home--and didn't, and we certainly didn't vote for the man who started it in the first place.

We are to blame, all of us, whatever our political views and affiliations.  If we're not actively involved every day in trying to end the madness of war, if we don't gasp in pain every time we're told of another death, if we accept the view that war is inevitable and there's nothing we can do to stop it, then we are to blame.  I write this blog to remind myself that demonstrating against war once or twice a year is just an excuse to pat myself on the back, to tell myself that I'm a good person, that they are responsible, not me.  Perhaps I should get a CT scan every week, to remind myself how much I value life, mine and theirs.  We are to blame, all of us.