A strange other feeling bubbled over me this past week. I found myself avoiding the television and turning off news radio after days of non-stop reporting of a tragedy far more profound. It wasn’t survivor guilt, because I wasn’t there, but the voice in my head nagged: “How can this little family drama surpass Christchurch?” This was just a dog.
I found myself apologising for my blubbering and avoiding people, especially the pet intolerant who I couldn’t expect to understand.
The day after the dog died, I sat on a grubby plastic chair in an inner-city emergency department as a young doctor injected a needle deep into a gaping wound on my daughter’s face. I thought about the doctors over there in the ruins of Christchurch. How trivial this small but sickeningly deep wound seemed.
But hang on, I say to myself, this is my world, and though far away from the earthquake zone, my little dramas remain just that. Relativity isn't the issue here. It's pain, pure and simple and it comes in all shapes and sizes. I gave thanks for small mercies: we loved our little dog and he loved us. He had a happy, peaceful life.
The daughter is sleeping it off and will recover in time to frock up for the next 18th birthday party. She will be mildly annoyed by a fat wad of steristrips hanging off her pretty chin, but she will get over it.
I think about earthquake stricken families with issues far greater than mine and I hope they find peace soon. And I'm recalling an earlier time as a member of a disenchanted posse of social work students who were reminded to “think global but act local”.
In recognition of life’s painful interludes, I’m concentrating on being kind and patient. Yesterday I even smiled at the idiot who almost backed his car into mine. The good news is that he didn't. We waved to each other and drove off. Warm glows all around.
I pick up the weekend paper to reconnect with the world and my warm glow fades. I wonder how the media can justify the exploitation of people in pain, to make sales and reap profits. Do we really need a front page photo of a devastated family just realising the death of a wife and mother?
Isn’t it enough to know some unlucky soul in a crushed building in downtown Christchurch had his legs amputated on site? Apparently not. We need to know specifics: that a pen knife and a local carpenter’s hacksaw were used by a couple of doctors, one of whom was so sickened by the procedure that she remains too traumatised to be hounded by reporters for a comment. We need to know a local cop relentlessly hacked away until the leg came off before the man was whisked away to hospital.
Ugh…but wait a minute. I think I like reading about it! I sip my coffee and go a-hunting for more tales of blood and gore. I thought it was only morons who relished continuous disaster porn on crass commercial TV. At least my head’s stuck in a respectable broadsheet.
What is wrong with me? After all it was me who dragged the hubby to the cinema to watch a film about a self-absorbed loner who hacked off his arm with a cheap and nasty pocket knife after it became lodged under a falling boulder. That’ll teach him to leave the fancy Swiss army version at home. Off the high horse I must jump. I am as pathetic as that loser next to me, munching on a toastie as he swats over the daily rag, absorbed by New Zealand’s gore fest.
It is human nature, that’s what it is. Other people’s misery comforts and relieves us. It puts our little moments of agony into perspective. Perhaps the desperation of strangers may inspire us here on disaster’s sidelines to act benignly and to disperse goodwill towards our fellow human beings. Just for a little while, at least until those haunting images disappear from view.
I’m not sure how looting the debris or impersonating rescue workers fit with this heart-warming testament to humanity’s goodness.
With no little doggie to walk anymore, I’m toddling home to write a cheque for the Red Cross. Nothing more to do.
Published 1st March 2011: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/44532.html
Loved it jules, Libx
ReplyDeleteHi there, my condolences for your loss. Grief is grief, however you paint it. Maybe, as writers, the very best that we can do is write about it honestly, as you have.
ReplyDeleteKnow exactly how you feel about the dog, as my best girl, taken from the wilds in Andalucia in Spain, and brought to England later, died last year aged only 6, from bone cancer. Even though I see all the terrible tragedies around the world, and realise my sadness is just about a pet, it doesn't stop it. Good blog you wrote there.
ReplyDeleteI understand your grief. Grief is loss of what ever nature. I have made an appointment for our vet for Thursday to put our family dog to sleep. He has been a wonderful dog for 17 years but he is blind, deaf, and incontinent so a miserable life he has. I am not sure I can go through with it, yet it is sad to watch him find his way. Keep writing, and through our pain we come out winners.
ReplyDeleteTerri