Everything Matters
Reconciling Death, Reconciling with Dad
By Patrice Gaines
Thursday, June 15, 2006

I was going to write a column about my father until my neighbor stood outside my house and yelled at my upstairs window.

“Have you heard the news?!”

“What?,” I yelled back.

She was so gleeful I tried to imagine what wonderful event I was missing.

“They caught that guy—al-Zarqawi.”

“Oooh,” I said. I was not as gleeful as she was about this news, but I tried to at least register the sound of surprise.

On television, I watched military officials and politicians boast of the air strikes that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi is credited with spearheading a bloody sectarian war in that country and masterminding bombings that have killed hundreds. The U.S. military officials didn’t jump up and down and cheer over the news but their delight was present, tucked behind technical talk about laser guided missiles and 500 pounds of explosives.

      I am not judging or condemning them. I know that there are many people who trace their suffering directly back to al-Zarqawi and I have great compassion for them. Yet over breakfast I looked at that infamous face with blood and bruises on it and I could not see the thuggish killer, the terrorist, the cause for hatred between Sunni and Shiites. That al-Zarqawi was gone and what I saw was a man who was born from a womb like me.

I mourn for a world that believes one man can make such a horrible difference. I mourn for the world that counts the dead as if they are touchdowns. What quarter are we in? Who is winning?

A friend sent me an email saying exactly what I was feeling. She said: “I don’t need to see the photo of a dead man whose reach extended outside his own home country to a foreign land in order to make his mark. What I do need to see are the faces of those still alive who are struggling to make sense of all this. People who know their houses could be destroyed at any moment, whose families’ lives are threatened, who have no idea who is really on their side, if anyone.”

She continued, “I need to see the faces of the U.S. soldiers who are injured and going through treatment and rehab in droves at Walter Reed Army Medical Center… How about the faces of the thousands of soldiers who will be treated at a hospital and released and then treated like lepers by their own government when the post-traumatic stress disorder and other related ailments pop up and someone needs to pay the bill for treatment. I need to see the faces of the families separated as one parent gets sent to Afghanistan and the other to Iraq and the children get sent to live with whoever can take them. Maybe after I see all those faces I will know what this war is really about and reaffirm my resolve to see it end.”

If my father were alive he would probably be like my neighbor who yelled out the window. He was a retired Marine, a “lifer.” I am proud that he served his country, proud of his service in the Korean War. But I had to grow into this pride. I had to learn to respect his patriotism because we had such different political views.

When Black people rioted after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, my father said to me, “Your people are rioting.”

I thought they had every reason to burn and steal. He thought they were hooligans.

I did not understand my father then but shortly before he died, we struck a truce and with it came understanding I had never known. Mostly, I discovered that the man I had never heard say “I love you,” loved me greatly. After he died, I dreamed he came to the side of my bed while I was asleep and kissed me on my forehead, and that the kiss woke me up.

“I love you and I am proud of you,” he said.

“I know that,” I said, because I no longer needed to hear him say it. I had made my peace with who he was.

For years after his death, I continued to work on my relationship with him, rethinking my own actions and beliefs. Through this process I feel as if my father has taught me from the grave. Trying to love him more opened my heart so that I can understand my neighbor and not judge people who cheer the death of a man—or those who don’t.

So I mourn not so much for al-Zarqawi, who hopefully now knows the truth about all of this; I mourn for those of us who live in a world that believes it is possible to win a war. 

      

Patrice Gaines is a career journalist and author of "Laughing in the Dark: From Colored Girl to Woman of Color --A Journey from Prison to Power and Moments of Grace.” She lives outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, where she is co-founder of The BrownAngelCenter, a program for women who have been incarcerated.