Empty Chairs

"There's a grief that can't be spoken
There's a pain goes on and on
Empty chairs at empty tables..."
Les Miserables

It's a brilliant image, isn't it? The empty chair, the empty desk, the empty room.

Dickens used it too- when the Ghost of Christmas Present tells Scrooge "I see an vacant seat in a poor chimney corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved."

And in Oklahoma City, the victims of America's worst domestic terrorist attack are remembered with 168 empty chairs.

Since last friday this is the image that has stuck with me longest...the empty chairs in the room.

I admit to having difficulty dealing with these events. Like other first responders I have spoken to we tend to view them through two perspectives at once, both professional and personal. I have in the course of my job at least twice taken calls from people actually with victims of a shooting. One was a carjacking and the other a drive by shooting. I have taken lots of other calls on shootings and stabbings and other ugly things. I have also been to workshops teaching dispatchers how to respind to shooting incidents. I have watched surveillance videos of some of these incidentsin the course of rhis training. What other people find inconceivable we know all too well. The dispatchers, mrdics,and police officers who responded to this call are deveatated too--please have a thought for them as well.

But of course we're not just professionals we're parents and grandparents and spouses too. We know better than most how easily it could be our kids instead. My children attend innercity schools (the kind ironically, that many involved in these mostly suburban tragedies thought they were escaping.) Each of.our high schools and middle schools has a full time officer assigbed to the school. I am mostly ok with this. There is certainly some deteremt benefit to their presence andif there has to be someone with a weapon at a school lets make it a professional. But it isn't a cure all and sending one's child out the door in the morning remains an act of faith.

When you are a parent you don't just worry about their safety, you worry about their worry. You want the to be cautious, but not paranoid. And you wonder how this long string of tragedies has afffected them.


Sunday mornimg while waiting for the football game to start, my son I watched Forest Gump again. It's a favorite film for both of us. One of the things that has always felt true about the movie is the steady stream of assasinations that play like background music through the film. If you grew up in the 60's and 70's you know how it was. You can mark your ages by who died each year. From JFK to Lennon, it was the soundtrack of our youth.

And as I sat watching my son watching the film (and what did any of us do this weekend except watch our kids?) It occured to me that a similar story is playing out for my son. Born a few months after Oklahoma City
He was 4 for Columbine, 6 on 9/11,saw VA tech at 12, and Aurora CO just before his 17th birthday.

For our kids there is also rhe chilling reality that their victims of their youthful nightmares weree ordinary people just going about their lives.

All this went through my mind all weekend as I struggled for words and had none except to express my inarticulateness. I watched as muchnews coverage as I could stand knowing sooner or later some detail would crack me. After Virginia Tech it was a mother with her daughter's well worn point shoes that broke my heart. This time it was learning that at least one of those little girls was a Daisy Scout. My daughter was a Daisy, srill is a scoutin faxt, but I cuuld picture clear as day that little girl in her blue vest and that bubbly enthusiasm Daisies and Brownies always seem to have.

I don't know what the answers are but we need to have areal conversation about these several issues. I revere the Constitution as much as anyone, but surely the Founders never meant this. And we need to talk about thestigmatizing of mental illness, the lack of help for families, the lousy iinsurance coverage. And we need to adfress the culture of violence among young people, the feeling of cheapness of life that so many seem to share.

We need to do this before our hearts are broken again by another empty chair at the table.

Express Yourself--Favorite Christmas Songs

I hear the Bells on Christmas Day

I wrote this entry before last friday's horrific events. As a writer I remain frozen in thought with 1/2 dozen false starts littering my drafts. I have decided to go ahead with this because these sad times reflect what I was trying to say in the piece, so much of the Christmas music we love is born out of darkness to give us hope.


Along with decorating the tree and reading a little Charles Dickens, Christmas Carols are one of my favorite things about the holidays.  Maybe its because Christmas songs, like treasured tree ornaments and Tiny Tim blessing us all everyone, are about the best and purest ideals of the holidays, even when the songs themselves come out of the worst of times.  Maybe especially then.

Recently I was in the car with my daughter when John Lennon's Happy Christmas (War is Over) came on the radio, and the 13 yr old mentioned she really liked that song, and indeed it caused her to swipe my Lennon CD's and listen to more.  I mentioned that I always found it a melancholy song, both because of the time it was written (during the Vietnam war) and because John Lennon had died so close to Christmas, and I heard the song so many times that year.  There is a wistfulness to the children's choir singing "War is over, if you want it" and added sadness in the thought that it is more than 40 years and we are still waiting.

There are several nice versions of this but not surprisingly, I prefer the original.

When I started thinking about this post I realized that Happy Christmas isnt the only favorite of mine that hails from war time. One of the best selling songs of all time, Bing Crosby's recording of White Christmas dates to World War II,originally it was just one of many songs in the film Holiday Inn, but it took off that winter as it reminded many of the Christmas traditions they left behind. Bing does it best, accept no substitutes.

 

Also coming out of the war, though featured in a nostalgic film about an earlier time, is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, from Meet Me in St Louis. This was always a favorite song of mine, but it grows on me as I get older and am seperated one way or another from so many people who I would like to spend Christmas with. I like the way Judy Garland sang it in the movie, but check out this version, starring John Denver and  Rowlf the Dog from The Muppet Show.

Another favorite was born out of a differant kind of war.  Most peIople today don't realize that Do You Hear What I Hear was inspired by the Cuban Missle Crisis of 1962, which brought this planet closer than it has ever been to a nuclear war.  It takes a lamb, and a child, and a king to let everyone know the world needs peace.  This was another song that Bing Crosby did one of the first recordings of, and I think its still one of the best.

But my very favorite song born of war goes back to a very dark time indeed.  In 1863 the great poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was greatly disturbed by the ongoing Civil War, which he had sons fighting in, and which had not been going well for the North. It inspired him to write a poem he called Christmas 1863, but which is now better known by its opening words "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day."  He recounts the sadness of a wartime that mocks the message of "Peace on Earth good will to men" before consoling himself with the hope that  Good and Right and Peace would be restored in the end.  I dont think anyone has ever set down so clearly the dichotomy of celebrating  Christmas in the midst of war.  The poem has been set to several differant melodies, here is one of my favorite versions with Harry Belafonte

When I was a kid the first record album I ever owned was by Gene Autry.  I played it all the time in season and out, since it was the only one I had.  2 songs stuck with me, the classic Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer (I was kind of a misfit, and bullied a bit too, so we understood each other) and Here Comes Santa Claus (the 7 yr old Misfit me also appreciatated that "Santa Claus knows we're all God's children, that makes everything right.") 

Another song I really liked as a kid was The Little Drummer Boy.  There are a lot of great versions but Bing Crosby (Him again?) and David Bowie (yes really, Bowie)  have them all beat.

I have gone on, but please be patient for one more favorite.  Most people don't know this song, but it was recorded for John Denver and the Muppets, A Christmas Together.  It's called The Christmas Wish and features the one and only Kermit the Frog.  It may be my very favorite Christmas song. What I love about this song (besides Kermit) is its universiality: even if you arent celebrating Christmas, "If you believe in love, that will be more than enough for you to come and celebrate with me." Even if you never saw the Christmas star "I know there is a light, I have felt it burning bright, and I have seen it shining from afar".  and then Kermit wishes us what every one wants at the holidays, peace of mind and love throughout the year.

And in case we dont chat again this month, I wish you all the same.