Every time I drive behind a small fishing boat atop a small trailer, I think of that priest. From November 15, 1989. – JDW
DEATH. I guess it was the loss of Father Oddo which got me to thinking about life’s end. A man of God, a good man by all accounts, was driving down the street and somebody’s trailer hitch broke loose. End of story.
I know better than to ask… why?
I asked once. Someone – my uncle, as we stood watching the handfuls of tossed dirt begin to cover my little brother’s casket – said, “Why not?” He said it with a whisper as he put his arm around my shoulder and we stood there in the rain under an umbrella with tears running down our faces. I wiped mine. He let his run down his cheek and off his chin where they fell onto his white shirt.
“Why not?”
I knew what he meant. Death is as much as part of life as birth. Death is human. Yeah, sure, but…. Why did he have to die? Why my little brother? Why not Charles Manson? Why not Noriega?
Anger is human, too.
And I guess that’s why I found myself actually reading the obituary pages a couple of Sundays ago. I wanted to understand death better.
Twenty-two Portlanders. 22. People like Miss Gertrude Lister, who taught church school for fifty of her seventy-eight years. And James J. Rickard, a retired trucker, who worked as a security guard at Portland Meadows until the age of eighty-seven. Mrs. Rickard died in January. Edwin Verne Howard, 91, was married to Iva, who survives him, for sixty-seven years. 67. Sharon L. Wilson, who just turned thirty-nine (39), died of arrhythmia.
Chieto Morita was interned in Southern Idaho during World War II. In 1978, he received the Emperor’s Award from the American Consul General for his role in promoting good relations between the U.S. and Japan. Norma E. Salta had been a foster mother for more than one hundred children. 100.
Then there was this. “Lee Joseph Iseli… He was found strangled to death… near Vancouver Lake. He was four.”
Strangled. 4.
And all I can think is… why?
JOYCE MAYNARD. I don’t read this woman’s column all of the time, but just often enough to know where she’s coming from once in a while.
Well, Joyce’s mom died, and the next thing I know, she packs up and leaves her husband Steve and their house and their two little boys and a girl. Walked right out.
It was not much of a surprise, really. We could all see it coming. But now we’re going to read all about it.
“I believe a husband and a wife who are unhappy together, who have tried very hard to work things out for a long time without being able to do so,” Joyce writes, “(they) have the right to separate.” But, I wonder, do parents have the same right?
Maybe she’s correct. I don’t know. It’s her life. But, it’s also Steve’s life. It’s the life of those three kids.
Listen to this. “But having taken that one large and extraordinarily painful action that places their needs above those of their children. I think they must do everything they can from that moment on to act in a way that will be best for the children.”
Sounds like something George Bush might say. FROM THAT MOMENT ON.
From that moment on. Whatever.
And then she goes on to write that those three kids are the same as they were before their parents broke up and Mommie moved out of the house.
And I am wondering if she really believes that.
I don’t.
Do you?
