Words cannot express how thankful I am to have a normal immediate family, specifically a normal mother who doesn’t obsess over the past and live in a state of frenzied grief.
That was the first thought that entered my mind after completing Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl. Ozick’s tale portrays a woman named Rosa during and following the time of the Nazi reign. Rosa witnesses a Nazi guard murdering her daughter Magda and the incident scars her for the remainder of her life. She continues to live in the past, shows odd signs of grief (destroying her store and needing Magda’s shawl), and refuses to let anyone into her life.
As I read, I kept thinking, “Get over it! Move on and finish grieving!”
Then I realized that I hadn’t been through anything close to this traumatic. Strangely, my memory jumped to Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq in 2004.
Mrs. Sheehan claims that her son died "for nothing," taking extreme measures trying to prove her point. She lost her marriage and funds and many questioned her sanity because of her decisions.
I’m sure it’s difficult to let go and to finish grieving over events with such a magnitude as losing a loved one – especially a child – whether from the Holocaust or the war in Iraq. While I don’t agree with either woman’s methods or madness in grieving, I have no reference point for dealing with such an event. I can’t help but wonder how such an event would impact my own life and how I would handle such grief.
2 comments:
very nice... you are right when you say without actually experiencing the situation it is impossible to judge a person's way of dealing with things. I think this is a major flaw of Americans who take everything for granted. Even stepping inside Rosa's shoes wouldn't even justify judging her because the situation would be so traumatic for us to even imagine.
I have to speak with respect to Cindy Sheehan, because like you say I don't have a reference point. I've never lost a son in war. I pray I never do. One thing I know, though. We live in an era when early death is less common than it is today, and so we are less able to deal with it. It's worth noting that only last century, the child mortality rate was around 30% and in that same centuries two wars happened, WW 1 and WW 2 in which thousands of families were bereaved. Remember "Saving Private Ryan" and the letter read out about the Bixby family, who lost five sons in the Civil War? And the Sullivan family, lost five sons when the vessel they were all crewmen on sank? That puts it into a bit of context.
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