vitalwholeness

If you follow the aftermath of heinous violations of humanity, whether they be lone monsters or collective genocides, there is the aftermath. That aftertaste contains the full emotional flavor of those violated. There is the unfairness, the hatred of the perpetrators, the deep loss of something that never can be recovered. The violations are small, big, bigger and enormous. They affect our family, our personal life, our psychic well-being, the future of an entire ethnic group.

Justice and fairness may not appear in close proximity to the violation. It may never appear in our lifetime. And some people are driven to despair because the day of truth never dawns. Wrong was committed with no reckoning. It eats at folks, especially those who expect a fair world. That’s why people seek retribution – either legally or on their own. It’s not only to vent rage toward the one who took so much. It is a feeble attempt to right the scales.

Some people comfort us by appealing to Karma, consequences, the embedded cause-and-effect of actions. Cast your bread on the waters and it shall come back to you. And often it does. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, as the Psalmist reminds us, the wicked lie at ease and the righteous suffer. It’s true, it happens.

I, on the other hand, have come to a different conclusion about this. I believe that vindication comes, truth makes an appearance, because truth is irrepressible. It’s just that it is often not convenient, not showing up on cue. If you wait long enough the truth comes out, even when it is repressed and resisted. Even surrounded by lies it tends to bubble up.

I remember after the execution of Timothy McVeigh they interviewed some of the families of the victims. The angriest had a party, got their pound of flesh. But most didn’t have the closure they thought they would. In fact, they said things like, “There’s not the relief I thought I would feel. It’s just empty.”

And that’s the way it is so often. We are glad justice is served when it is. But somehow the eventual punishment of the perpetrator doesn’t taste as sweet as it looked on the menu. And it’s not just revenge that lacks the sugar. That includes other various shades of vindication. And here is why I believe it is that way.

The violation of any, the evil intentions of any, are the premier evidence that betray the seamier side of our human nature. We are capable of such harm, demonstrated regularly by the things we think and do. And when the evil-doer falls, even justly, even with the smack of just desserts, it is a reminder, once again, of how deplorable it gets. My loss is not softened a shred. But I am reminded how miserable we can make one another. That leaves me with the endgame of sadness, the remnant, the leftover grieving that concludes with the rectification of the innocent and revealing of the malevolent. Even though the song is over, the last note is inevitably a blue one.

It has worked that way in my life. What may have begun as anger at injustice was changed, sometimes against my will and ego, into some strange compassion for the one who committed harm. And I don’t honestly know if it is forgiveness as much as giving up on the idea that I don’t commit equal harm just differently. When I get there, to the moment of seeing the plank in my own eye, I strive much less to take one out of the the eye of even the one who harmed me. Vindication or not, that is true freedom.

As the surgeon attended to our loved one, she was losing the battle with her own son. After surgery she would remove her scrubs and travel to his bedside, not as a healer, but rather a grief-stricken mother.

I will never forget it and it lives in the poem I wrote at the time:

You came back
with scalpel and skill
to do what you do best
a woman healing other women
with patient precision

You carried
training and experience
willingness and resolve
suspending your own life
for the sake of another

You shared
good news and reassurance
description and instruction
one of the rituals we repeat
in waiting rooms

You asked us
for prayers
when we mentioned your son
for we knew
why you had to go back

You suggested
particular words
not generic or laden with false hope
but words of mercy
that he might not suffer

You already knew
the encouraging case
unfolding on your operating table
just what to do, and when
toward the happy ending

You were helpless
before the bad news
served at your own kitchen table
where credential and vocation
stood mutely by

You took your hands
and moved them for others
a dance of hope
when you couldn’t lift a finger
for your own

Did you, as your blade carved out a future
ask why this one and not the other
or rail
against bitter ironies
under your breath?

Or did you offer
the only thing at your disposal
some sideways gratitude
for making a difference in one place
while remaining desperate in another?