"Those who thrive on hatred destroy their own capacity to make a positive contribution." --Nelson Mandela
Another day of being in tears. It started this morning, when I watched a tape of Matthew Shepard's parents on Dateline. It was too sad. Baby photos. Videotapes from a young age; Matthew Shepard playing Abraham Lincoln in a school play. It reminded me of that King Vidor movie about the Great War, in which a mother greeting her son goes through a memorylogue of his growing years, culminating in his leg amputated at the knee.
Other things that were too sad to bear. Matthew's family knowing he was gay way before he was able to them himself. Matthew's mother telling the TV audience that her son was raped in Morroco. Matthew's mother relating how that "PING" noise on the Saudi phone system indicates an incoming foreign call. That "PING" that comes in the middle of the night. Those calls in the middle of the night never bode well. One of my father's earliest memories is the one of that phone call in the middle of the night in the early 1930s when his grandmother died. That same call I got one morning two years ago from him when my grandmother died.
But for Matthew Shepard's parents, that phone call rang with even more certainty. Matthew was raped and then suffered depression. Took medication and sometimes drank alcohol despite it. The moment she mentioned the rape, I was uncontrollable. This makes me wonder why, why. Why for him and not for so many others. Perhaps it's a lengthier article for print somewhere, but I will be brief.
It's his youth. Youth is not supposed to be trampled savagely. Youth indicates a certain promise of impending adventures, and/or at least some possibility of forgetting and forgiving the past. That was taken from him forever.
Forgiveness. Is it possible? His mother's comment on the picketers at her son's funeral? She cannot truly grasp the depth of a hatred that "discolors everything in their lives." Not for his father. He thinks the Fred Phelps people who picketed his sons' funeral were "asinine" but his killers? They will not be forgiven. It is just not possible. How do you forgive someone who so bloodied your son with blows to the head that only a constant stream of his tears left part of his face clean?
We visited my parents today. Malcolm X was on channel 9--one of the only reasons to watch that channel. The ending of that movie is one of the most gripping I have ever seen.
I will tell you all about it. They go to modern-day Harlem, to Malcolm X Boulevard. They show people in Soweto. They show Nelson Mandela speaking. They show a teacher addressing aclassroom on X's birthday, telling them that they all have a part of Malcmolm X inside them. They show a succession of children standing up and each of them proclaiming very loudly:
"I am Malcolm X!"
"I am Malcolm X!"
"I am Malcolm X!"
And so on. When my sister asked me if it was Mandela, I was completely choked up at that moment. I just nodded. I don't think any of them noticed how absorbed I was at that moment. Those kids, endless, yelling "I am Malcolm X!" I have never gotten over that moment. It makes up for any badness of that film. I love it.
Mandela will be stepping down soon as President of South Africa. He said in his final major speech to the Parliament, "Those who thrive on hatred destroy their own capacity to make a positive contribution."
Mandela found a way for an entire nature to tell the truth and reconcile. I know that next month one of Shepard's killer will probably be lying about that night. I know that his parents and large portions of this nation will never reconcile.
Mandela preaches national reconciliation and yet we cannot forgive each other anything here in our country. Everything is a holy war. And I am torn between the two. I would like to be able to yell "I am Matthew Shepard!" but that would be profane. But perhaps one day I am going to be able to at least once get up in front of a classroom here in New York and say, "I am Seth Bookey and I am gay." Someone is going to have to be brave. Who better than ourselves? If not, how do we ever forgive ourselves, much less the nation?
Next entry... This Is the Week