Protecting the Unprotectable
copyright@2019
Will Maguire
Many years ago, as a teenage boy, I fell in love with a girl... or perhaps better put, I thought it was love.
It was really only the first hopeful version of it. All expectation...long the get and short on give. This was before I knew anything about the sacrifice or selflessness it always demands.
Her mother had died young that year of cancer and her death cut a hole in the girl. Her father, a lawyer, believed his faith had been betrayed. So every night he tried to wash his grief away, usually with gin.
The hole in the girl grew and then like a torn sweater, she began to unravel.
I used to go by her house in the middle of the night, tap on her window and we would whisper thru the screen about how I was going to save her and how she was going to save me.
I lived by the sea then and some nights she would sneak out and we would go to the beach. She would lie in my arms sobbing.
I tried my best to save her, to protect that unprotectable part of her. But there was a part that was unreachable and inconsolable.
We finished school and she ran away out west where she met and married a man who in short order began to beat her. And as these things usually go, bad became worse.
After all the blackened eyes and a broken jaw, he ended up throwing her down a flight of stairs, breaking her back. He left her there in that dark basement for a couple days. Said she must have fallen.
They divorced, but by then something in her...something already fragile...had broken away completely.
I was living in New York and once every couple years, usually in the middle of the night, she began to call me. She was always in a new city out west, always a little scattered, always a little frantic. In full flight from the future, seeking some respite in the past. The boy on that beach. The whisperer promising to save her thru that screen...trying to protect the unprotectable.
The last time she called I told her to stop chasing the past. That whisperer doesn't exist anymore I hollered. He was long gone. She had the wrong number. He and I just happened to have the same name.
She dropped the phone and I called out to her for a minute before the line went dead.
She died in a car crash a year later. 100 mph down a dead end street. Full of nevers.
So I blamed her husband. I blamed the flight of stairs. I blamed her mother for dying young and her father for his contagious and inconsolable grief.
And of course I blamed myself.
I have five sisters. One of them married a tall good looking basketball player. A few years into their marriage, he began to beat her. Not slapping around. Closed fist. Beatings.
He was a big guy, a man, at least in that one respect, and he hurt her badly. They eventually split and when she finally explained why I remember feeling my blood run cold. When I think of it now I still feel my vision narrow and my heart begin to swing away like it had arms and fists.
Trying once again to protect the unprotectable.
A couple years later while staying with my folks, my mother woke me in the middle of the night. This guy was passing through on a bus. He called. Wanted to talk. My mother asked if I would go meet him.
I pulled on some clothes and drove to the bus station. He was in the deserted waiting area as I walked in. He stood, smiled and walked toward me ...his hand out.
I walked toward him feeling my heart growing arms with every step. When I reached him it swung as hard as it could and I felt my knuckles break open as I connected.
He went down, shock on his face. And I recall standing over him hollering about my sister and thinking about my high school girl, broken at the bottom of a staircase.
I cannot stop the world. And I cannot protect the unprotectable past. But I thought, I can damn sure let my cold blood run. Just to let the world know there is no free pass...and no unearned forgiveness.
And to this day when I see a guy getting his ass kicked I think he probably deserves it....if not for some proximate cause then for something in his past.
But if I see a woman getting slapped around or worse... I'm all in. Everytime.
I'm usually thinking about my sister or my old girlfriend. I'm thinking about the whisperer I was and the sobbing girl on a beach...trying to prevent what cant really be prevented...trying to protect what cant be protected.
I think of all this today because I have been remembering a girl I never met, an American aide worker who went to Syria to try and help refugees.
It was a selfless and senseless act that makes me want to reach and shake everyone like her, whispering thru the screens of their good hearts about how they are going to save something like innocence...that is unprotectable.
I want to tell her the world doesn't care about your charity. Then I want to cut out my own tongue.
She was, of course, kidnapped and, according to a Washington Post report, made into a sex slave by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the head of ISIS. He raped her repeatedly, then tortured her. Then he beat her to death, all in the name of his warped ideology.
She was 27. 100 mph down another dead end street and full of nevers. Never made it home, never married, never had a kid.
And once more I begin to feel my heart swing away.
None of us can stop the outrageous and perverse cruelties of the world. They reimagine themselves in a million new ways each day. And though we try again and again,we cannot protect the unprotectable.
But today I find myself thinking of justice. It a small thing and usually late.
Yesterday brought news of al-Baghdadi’s death by suicide vest. In the end he destroyed himself.
The truth is he did so years ago.
His body just caught up to his soul.
copyright@2019
Will Maguire
Many years ago, as a teenage boy, I fell in love with a girl... or perhaps better put, I thought it was love.
It was really only the first hopeful version of it. All expectation...long the get and short on give. This was before I knew anything about the sacrifice or selflessness it always demands.
Her mother had died young that year of cancer and her death cut a hole in the girl. Her father, a lawyer, believed his faith had been betrayed. So every night he tried to wash his grief away, usually with gin.
The hole in the girl grew and then like a torn sweater, she began to unravel.
I used to go by her house in the middle of the night, tap on her window and we would whisper thru the screen about how I was going to save her and how she was going to save me.
I lived by the sea then and some nights she would sneak out and we would go to the beach. She would lie in my arms sobbing.
I tried my best to save her, to protect that unprotectable part of her. But there was a part that was unreachable and inconsolable.
We finished school and she ran away out west where she met and married a man who in short order began to beat her. And as these things usually go, bad became worse.
After all the blackened eyes and a broken jaw, he ended up throwing her down a flight of stairs, breaking her back. He left her there in that dark basement for a couple days. Said she must have fallen.
They divorced, but by then something in her...something already fragile...had broken away completely.
I was living in New York and once every couple years, usually in the middle of the night, she began to call me. She was always in a new city out west, always a little scattered, always a little frantic. In full flight from the future, seeking some respite in the past. The boy on that beach. The whisperer promising to save her thru that screen...trying to protect the unprotectable.
The last time she called I told her to stop chasing the past. That whisperer doesn't exist anymore I hollered. He was long gone. She had the wrong number. He and I just happened to have the same name.
She dropped the phone and I called out to her for a minute before the line went dead.
She died in a car crash a year later. 100 mph down a dead end street. Full of nevers.
So I blamed her husband. I blamed the flight of stairs. I blamed her mother for dying young and her father for his contagious and inconsolable grief.
And of course I blamed myself.
I have five sisters. One of them married a tall good looking basketball player. A few years into their marriage, he began to beat her. Not slapping around. Closed fist. Beatings.
He was a big guy, a man, at least in that one respect, and he hurt her badly. They eventually split and when she finally explained why I remember feeling my blood run cold. When I think of it now I still feel my vision narrow and my heart begin to swing away like it had arms and fists.
Trying once again to protect the unprotectable.
A couple years later while staying with my folks, my mother woke me in the middle of the night. This guy was passing through on a bus. He called. Wanted to talk. My mother asked if I would go meet him.
I pulled on some clothes and drove to the bus station. He was in the deserted waiting area as I walked in. He stood, smiled and walked toward me ...his hand out.
I walked toward him feeling my heart growing arms with every step. When I reached him it swung as hard as it could and I felt my knuckles break open as I connected.
He went down, shock on his face. And I recall standing over him hollering about my sister and thinking about my high school girl, broken at the bottom of a staircase.
I cannot stop the world. And I cannot protect the unprotectable past. But I thought, I can damn sure let my cold blood run. Just to let the world know there is no free pass...and no unearned forgiveness.
And to this day when I see a guy getting his ass kicked I think he probably deserves it....if not for some proximate cause then for something in his past.
But if I see a woman getting slapped around or worse... I'm all in. Everytime.
I'm usually thinking about my sister or my old girlfriend. I'm thinking about the whisperer I was and the sobbing girl on a beach...trying to prevent what cant really be prevented...trying to protect what cant be protected.
I think of all this today because I have been remembering a girl I never met, an American aide worker who went to Syria to try and help refugees.
It was a selfless and senseless act that makes me want to reach and shake everyone like her, whispering thru the screens of their good hearts about how they are going to save something like innocence...that is unprotectable.
I want to tell her the world doesn't care about your charity. Then I want to cut out my own tongue.
She was, of course, kidnapped and, according to a Washington Post report, made into a sex slave by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the head of ISIS. He raped her repeatedly, then tortured her. Then he beat her to death, all in the name of his warped ideology.
She was 27. 100 mph down another dead end street and full of nevers. Never made it home, never married, never had a kid.
And once more I begin to feel my heart swing away.
None of us can stop the outrageous and perverse cruelties of the world. They reimagine themselves in a million new ways each day. And though we try again and again,we cannot protect the unprotectable.
But today I find myself thinking of justice. It a small thing and usually late.
Yesterday brought news of al-Baghdadi’s death by suicide vest. In the end he destroyed himself.
The truth is he did so years ago.
His body just caught up to his soul.
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