Remembrance

Remember that girl who said she was hot in her last post.

Well, it's true. I'm hot.

Hot pink now.

Oh, goodness, am I going to pay for today.

Okay, I ask you: how is it legal that the sun gets to turn me into pink lemonade served at red lobster when I had gobs of sunblock on AND I wore not spaghetti-straps, not a halter top but a pretty little flowery number that covers shoulders and arms (well, upper arms ... well, the top half of upper arms). I even wore a large-brimmed white sun hat, getting into the spirit of the thing, but did it preserve me from getting these red-raccoon eyes and ... oh, God, I'm a stereotype: red neck?

Noooooooo!

And, yes, if you've noticed the trend in the dresses I wear: I like flowers. Like Alice, who likes arranging them (although arrangements're not my specialty) and seeing them and holding them very delicately and breathing them into my being when I pass by them. Problems? Talk to the elbow, 'cause the hand's tired of listening and is now out to lunch!

Hm. I don't think I can defend me being a lipstick lesbian. Oh, well; there goes that career path!

But look at me: talking about myself, when I sat in the bleachers, along with eleven thousand other spectators melting in the sun, even as we wore a black tee that said "New American; Old Irish: One and Inseparable" with short-short jean shorts.

[God, did I want to scream, "THANK YOU!" to that girl, SUCH a cutie! Then I would've kissed her hard, and threw her right on to the ground and fucked her brains out, regardless of what her husband/boyfriend/brother would have had thought about the situation. It was hot outside ... she was hotter! ... and Irish-American!]

But here everybody was, in various states of undress, watching all those manly men and boys march right into battle carrying not just their canteens and muskets and pill-box hats (stuffed with ice cubes! Smart!). But they were also wearing worsted-wool OVERCOATS?!?! ... and BOOTS?!? and layers and layers and layers of clothes, to march right out to face the better armed and overwhelming Union troops, less than 100 yards away so they could stand face to face and get the Hell blasted out of each other?

And the shocking thing, besides the carnage (boys were falling to the ground like flies), was that they would amiably turn to us, ask after our day, hope that we were enjoying ourselves, and be concerned about how we were taking the heat and 'make sure you drink plenty of water!'

I mean, like, they cared more for us than they cared for themselves.

Luckily for me, I didn't get lucky. I mean, how could I? They were all packed together like sardines in these sweltering little pup tents when they were amongst themselves, and when they weren't they were swarmed by hordes of fans, taking pictures, asking questions, and being told how hot it was today.

And in the heat, I was concentrating more on staying hydrated than anything else, and putting one foot in front of the other. We had to walk miles! to get to the battleground, in the sweltering sun (obscured by cooling clouds, thank God!), and ...

And that's exactly what they did, 150 years ago. They marched for miles, and then at 6 am, a little fight broke out between the opposing sides, and then, at the end of that weekend there were hundreds dead. Hundreds.

I watched a corpsman run out to aid a wounded soldier, screaming in pain, and then I watched that corpsman running, and then suddenly drop, hard, onto the ground, ... and not move anymore, and not get up.

... and that happened 150 years ago: angry Americans, again, too fiery tempered to talk over things and settle things amicably, like how Canada mutually declared independence from British Rule, no, we had to piss on their representatives, literally, who happened to be our neighbors, literally, and then rattle swords and watch our boys and their boys kill each other.

And then we had to do it to ourselves.

And now we remember that. Our dead.

Ours are not the only dead.

In today's paper, there's Norway.

And one 'Christian extremist' bombed the capital and then when on a shooting rampage that left more than 80 dead on a labor party retreat ... most of the dead were school children in their teens.

And I glanced at that headline as I was getting my espresso, and read the article, and I thought: Saga could have been there.

And she was.

Somewhere in that multitude of people who will never surface from the water they dived into to escape a 'Christian Fundamentalist' who apparently opposed 'multiculturalism' was a girl or a boy that loved and was loved. Leaving a bereaved family behind.

And the take-away from this?

I'm scared.

I'm scared that people will start thinking about Christianity, in general, like people over here started thinking about Islam after 9/11, and they'll start enacting laws, and you ...

You'll think, 'Oh, Christianity breeds that sort of person.' Like him.

Like me.

`phfina, the little extremist Christian fundamentalist.

Put an AK-47 in my hands, and I'll tear through my high school, all whacked out on drugs and my idealism, and I pull the trigger but trip over my own feet and shoot myself up, fully automatic, so there'd be more lead than little fundamentalist, and everybody would laugh at me as my lungs filled with liquid and my vision grayed out to nothing, and their laughter would be the last thing I heard before oblivion overtook me.

But the thing of it is ...

I am a little Christian Fundamentalist.

Because, beside Columbine, there was a man who went on a shooting rampage right here in Virginia.

In an Amish school.

And you know what happened?

One girl broke line, and approached the man, holding them all hostage, and said 'Shoot me first.'

And you know what happened?

He shot, and killed, her first.

And you know what else happened?

Her sister, her only sibling, went up to him next and said, 'Shoot me next.'

And he shot her next. And she died.

They gave their lives so that he would use his bullets on them, so that the other girls in the classroom would have a shot at living.

And you know what? If he came to my high school, you know what I would do?

I would march right up to him, barely able to speak, because I'd be so terrified, and I'd say...

I'd say, "Shoot me first."

Why?

Because, one time, God offered me a shot. He showed me something, and I ran.

And if I was confronted with this? Or if I were on a plane, and a guy pulled a gun and screamed, 'You're all gonna die, you corrupt generation' of whatever twisted belief he holds, be it Christian or Muslim or something else that he believes is telling him to go out in a blaze of glory and to take as many sinners/infidels with him ...

I would say, scared out of my mind, 'thank you, God! Thank you, God, for giving me this chance to accept martyrdom this time, to stay and to stand, and to spare anybody, everybody else from this lunatic,' and I'm not talking about the lunatic holding the gun.

I'm talking about the lunatic facing the gunman.

Selfish, isn't it?

I mean: besides insane, of course.

But who am I thinking of the whole time? Me. Me, and how I can make reparation with God for my earlier cop-out, like I could possibly redeem me, and my wretched life with my glorious blaze-out.

And what was I thinking about on the battleground? Me and how I'm just wilting under the sun, and how the bed sheets are going to feel like razor blades on my skin tonight, and how this walk is just murderous to whom? To me.

And in my last post I put up my petty little concerns that affect nobody but me, and today more than 80 people died, and what are my whinings to that? A daughter/lover/friend is dead today, and she'll never get the chance to say one last, 'Mum, I'm sorry. Mum, I love you.' All she got to do was dive into that stormy cold water, feel the lead hammer into her back and breathe in salt and die, scared, screaming, helpless, and I worry about what?

But what can I do?

Really, what can I do?

I'm not asking this as 'oh, one person makes no difference,' no, I'm saying: this happened. This didn't happen to me.

God is giving me a gift of being alive, right now, today.

What am I going to do with this gift?

Because this gift? It was earned. Not by me. It was earned by two little Amish girls and their parents, now childless, who went to the guy and forgave him! It was earned by those brave, idealistic, stupid boys marching off for Country or Freedom or both and gave me this country today. It was earned by those boys and girls in Norway, who each gave their lives for me, who each died for me, and are telling me, right now, that now is all I have, so am I just going to sit here at my keyboard and cry for them, and is that a way to honor them?

Or will I honor them by being? Or by writing that next chapter? And saving one more life, letting one more person know that she (or he) is not alone, that there is this crazy little nut-case that feels exactly as she does, and has this magical ability to express these thoughts and feelings in words as she could not, and that there is beauty and hope in this world.

Even in this world of cruelty, randomness and despair.

And it starts, this hope, with me, and how I carry on, and how I ...

Shit. Life, living is so, so hard. It's just so hard sometimes to go on being into tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow as it creeps out its petty pace. And going out in a blaze of glory in front of a suicider's gun is just so terrifying, ...

and so tempting: "Boom!" goes the gun, and "HAHA! I WIN!" crows the `phfina, for the game is over.

Like I said, a cop-out. Because little me? There's another game, and it's called winning this next minute. NOT taking a drink from the bottle. Instead, picking up the figurative pen, looking hard and long into the mirror, into my soul, and writing something for someone who needs these words right now. And hearing her say to me, again, 'I'm alive now because your words gave me hope.'

And the swelling in my throat as I read what you do with your life because of something I wrote inspired you?

God, that hurts. It hurts so much, and that hurt is so good. I did nothing. I wrote something, and then you took on something and did something with your life.

And I remember that. I remember you, and honor you.