Today I listened to perhaps the worst episode of This American Life I've ever heard. It was about chickens, so you know it was pointless. Worse, each essay was rooted in the kind of elitist left-wing crapfest that –
Skip it.
That's what I was going to write about. How normally This American Life can be so brilliant (like their episode about Nauru) and then suck so immeasurably. I was going to call it "The exception that proves the rule."
Great, eh?
Then I went to the next episode, called "How to Rest in Peace."
-and then I spent an inordinate amount of time in a gas station restroom trying to get my collective sh!t back together.
The intro was a woman whose father was murdered when she was 10. She detailed her feelings of isolation – resenting our murder-as-entertainment culture, any number of straightforward observations about her experience with her dad's death.
She related an encounter with the mother of a murdered child – a woman who had devoted her life to pursuing her child's killers. This mother wanted to help this woman find the killers of her dad.
The mother's mindset, while perfectly understandable, is portrayed as being completely alien to the narrating woman's experience. She had no interest in pursing her father's killer. In fact she hoped that it would be impossible – so that she would be free of that obligation.
The way she put it – her dad's murderers, in jail or at large, had no bearing and no relevance when it came to how she felt about her dad.
This was the intro.
I extracted the obvious parallels from her story – but whatever. It's just a show, right?
Act I was Jason Minter. A man who was investigating the horrifying murder of his mother.
I can't do justice to the story, so if you haven't heard it – go to their website and listen.
Essentially, when he was six and his sister was three - his mother and another woman were murdered in the next room during a botched break-in and robbery. The killers were caught and will spend decades in jail.
The story is related realtime since (of course) Jason is making a documentary about his life.
The horror of this particular crime would have washed over me a few years ago. I would have lapped it up like the people vilified earlier in the show for hosting a murder-themed party.
I just cannot get past what this man was doing. He was re-investigating a solved crime. His reaction to visiting the crime scene cannot be overstated. He has no emotion, and he desperately wants some. His sister cries, but he does not. Even when confronted with crime scene photographs of his dead mother – shot in the head – his reaction is muted and self-conscious. He knows he should be emotional – realizes that he isn't, and he expresses his curiosity about it.
That is not how I am these days.
I remember when my grandfather died. Specifically, when my father called to tell me – I felt absolutely nothing. I was that way for days. It was like someone had told me the score to a sporting event that I couldn’t care less about.
"Oh."
I truly thought something was wrong with me. Right up until the funeral. Dad's reaction at that funeral, well that was the end of any stoicism I might have had.
This man was trying to reach that point – where he could feel something about what had happened. Something beyond the clinical recitation of facts. Something to hold on to.
Mr. Minter had a theory that there was some hidden motive in the death of his mother. That the monstrous crime that had irreparably damaged his family's lives had originated in something other than random chance.
This is where I started losing track of things.
I think this is the problem I've had for two years plus.
On the day I was hired, my boss had said, "things happen for a reason."
My boss is a good person, optimistic. I like them.
-But when they said that, I had the most visceral impulse so say something. More than an impulse, really a vision of what I would say and exactly how I would say it.
"In my experience," I would say, "there are things that are immune to all reason."
These words have reappeared on countless occasions in my head demanding to be said. There has been no real opportunity to say them, and surely there never will be. They would always be inappropriate and this blog is perhaps the only venue where they can be let out.
And they are so inadequate as to be a joke.
When Mr. Minter meets with one of the men involved with his mother's murder, he gets a first person narrative that leaves little doubt that his conspiratorial theory about his mother's murder has no basis in fact.
When pressed, even Jason admits there's not much evidence to back him up. Still, it's easy to understand the allure of the idea that the crimes weren't just a random incident. Imagine going through life not just knowing, but really knowing that your life could implode in the worst possible way at any moment.He is clutching at threads.
Imagine internalizing the notion that every little decision, like driving over the neighbor's house to drop off a friend could put you in the path of disaster.
Because however little comfort it would be, it would still be comforting to know that what happened to his mother was unavoidable. That it was deliberate and calculated. That is didn't just happen out of the blue.
He knows his theory is virtually groundless – and he pursues it anyway because it is better than the alternative.
I'm in a gas station when I'm hearing this. Buds in and pretending to read the newspaper.
I only have that meaningless alternative.
Yet somehow part of me is dying to do what this man has done. Pursue something that is a mystery only to me.
Dad's death was an accident. There are no killers to pursue, prosecute or execute. There are no motives or hidden agendas. No purpose.
He fell.
So I've been told.
The sum of what I know about that day was related to me in two conversations: the cell call from mom on the day he died – and eavesdropping on my mom telling grandma what happened.
Since asking mom for more detail is impossible – good God, how could you even begin that conversation? I'd imagine speaking to the neighbor who gave my dad CPR.
I've imagined speaking to the EMTs, as if they'd remember anything. Like this event would have had any effect on them. Just another in a long list of DOAs.
The entire time I'd been listening to Mr. Minter's story I'd been comforting myself with the thought that he's crazy. But I know the impulse, and were circumstances only slightly different – I could easily go down the same path.
It wasn't so long ago that a chance conversation with my mom had me writing judges in pursuit of my great-grandfather's treatment history and insane record.
The unpalatable truth is what I am dancing around.
Dad died doing something he'd done countless times before. Something he didn't have to do – if it hadn't been for the goddamned storm. If he'd waited for the county to do it, if he'd worn a goddamned helmet-
He died for no reason at all.
I am so unbelievably furious about this and there is no useful target to aim at.
I'm ignoring the show now, vacantly looking towards my newspaper.
The only alternative I can think of is to study the minutiae of dad's death to avoid the subject.
About the time I've worked through how I'm going to start asking which people for what information, I realize I need to get the hell away from people since I'm about to start looking like a crazy person.
Next thing I know, I'm in the bathroom, and somebody's jiggling the doorknob.
I don't have a windout for this - and there doesn't appear to be much in the way of solutions. But the purpose of this thing was always to allow me to scream into the void.
So I do, if only because it seems more rational than the other things I can think of.
