I Was Brought Low. . .

This is about death, a subject that scares the hell out of me. The other day news broke in Richmond about a horrendous murder. In a poor neighborhood on Richmond’s Southside an eight year-old boy was murdered. His head was crushed with a block by an assailant who was attempting to rape the little boy’s nine year-old sister. The little boy came to his sister’s aid and was murdered. One moment, two children playing; the next, a senseless murder.

            This facility has a connection to that tragedy. Friday afternoon the guy in bunk “70” was called up to the booth. “You need to go to the watch command.” The dead boy was his son. The assailant a fourteen year-old from the neighborhood. It took less than five minutes for everyone to know. And what do you say to a man doing five years for drug possession who is told his son is dead? There is a heartfelt moment in “The Shawshank Redemption” where the protagonist Andy Dufresne, looks at his years in prison and tells his friend, “I made mistakes and I’ve paid for them … and then some.” I’ve told myself the same thing. I’m sure Job muttered those same words. Even those words fall short when I look at the man in “70.” What does it all mean? “I was brought low and He saved me.” For what, I wondered.

            One of my close friends here is a Navy retiree – 25 years as a Master Chief, E8, in the U.S. Navy. Four years out of the service, living a good life in the Virginia Beach area, and he gets drunk and drives. He drives through a red light and hits a car. A grandmother and her eight year-old granddaughter are in that car. The impact kills both. My friend walks away without a scratch except, except he sees the little girl in the car every day. He can’t go back and get a “do over.” He can’t undo his stupid behavior. He does his sentence and tries to atone the best he can. But, the girl is dead; the grandmother is dead; and he can’t wash the blood off … and he shouldn’t. I can’t make sense of any of it. Good people do bad things; bad things happen to good people; life goes on, even in death, life goes on.

            Bug splat. That’s our military’s jargon for an errant drone attack; like two weeks ago, six kids playing in a rock-strewn courtyard somewhere in Afghanistan. One moment they are there, the next vaporized. “Wrong target. Bug splat.” Hell of a phrase.

            The other night, the state of Oklahoma tried to execute a convicted murderer. The guy lying on the gurney won’t get much sympathy. He raped a young woman, shot her three times, then buried her – still alive. So he’s condemned to death by the state. Problem is, there’s a shortage of lethal injection drugs so the states are trying all sorts of combinations of “other” drug. We aren’t far from giving a guy on death row a twelve-ounce bottle of anti-freeze.

            They strap the guy down, finally (after multiple attempts) find a “viable” vein – in his groin – and start pumping drugs into him. A “good” lethal injection leads (1) sleep (2) breathing stopping (3) heart stopping. This doesn’t work out that way. The first drug doesn’t knock him out. By the time number 2 is pumped in, the vein has collapsed and the drugs are seeping and pooling under his skin. For over forty minutes the condemned moans in pain until he suffers a massive heart attack (ironically fifteen minutes after the head of Oklahoma DOC stops the execution because it’s been so badly botched).

            And most folks’ reaction? “So what? He was a cold-blooded killer who didn’t think anything of torturing and killing poor girl.” I shake my head and realize all the talk about forgiveness, all the mom and apple-pie, July 4^th talks about “rule of law” doesn’t stand a chance against bug-splat and botched executions.

            Death. One truth I understand is, we’re all going to die. And most of us don’t get to pick the time, place or manner. Those that we leave behind try and find meaning in it all, like the guy in bed 70 trying to figure out the cosmic connection between his crime and incarceration and his son’s death. And my friend, he tries to atone – if that’s even possible.

            So often we act nonchalantly about death as it surrounds and invades our daily life. It doesn’t directly hit us; we breathe a sigh of relief. At times – like Newtown or Columbine – when we’ll hug our kids a little tighter, when our chests clutch ever so deeper, when we realize we aren’t in control and it can all be taken so suddenly, and callously, and without a moment’s thought. And we’re scared and confused.

            “Show me the way

            Take me tonight to the river

            And wash my illusions away

            Please show me the way.

            Give me the courage to believe

            I’ll get there someday

            Please show me the way.”

            None of it makes sense, the guy suffering in bed 70, the grandmother and little girl in the car, the kids in the courtyard, even the murderer on a gurney … and I close my eyes and hear David’s words, “I was brought low and He saved me.” And that has to be enough to get me through.