Hiccup

Minor setback aside, I suppose normal (to which I had forgotten) is really a thin layer of eggshells underneath which our heavy feet navigate without crushing. Lulled into a false sense of security, after the seizure Dad had, that’s how it feels on occasion.   

I was watching a four part television documentary directed and narrated by Werner Herzog, whereby he was granted the rare opportunity to interview several inmates on death row. Herzog, not a proponent of the death penalty himself, does not try to humanize any of the inmates interviewed and does not try to sway the viewer in one direction or the other with regards to the moral ethics involved amidst capital punishment. It was the second episode that dealt with convicted murderer Linda Carty, a woman accused of kidnapping 25-year-old Joana Rodriguez, allegedly in order to steal her new born son that grabbed my attention. I’m not writing about this woman’s innocence or guilt, nor as an advocate for or against the death penalty myself. Instead I’m writing about a woman interviewed about this case. It was what she said that struck a chord with me.  

She mentioned how we, as human beings, are always moving forward. It is built into our human nature, the fiber of who we are as a species and honestly, one of the reasons for our quick evolution. I can’t tell you how many friends and people in general I talk to that echo this philosophy on a daily basis. People post things about it on social networks, quotes and inspirational sayings abound about it all over the Internet. Always moving forward. I think in moving forward; however, we can also lose a sense of the past. We can forget, because a reminder is not in front of us. For example, as a viewer of this documentary, we get to know Linda Carty on death row. We get to hear her side of what happened or didn’t happen with regards to her incident. We may even feel sympathy about her position on death row as part of the humanness in all of us. The point is, in moving forward we get to hear her, period. We do not get to hear from the victim, Joana Rodriquez, because she is no longer living. She doesn’t get to tell her story. She has been forced into the pages of history, through circumstances beyond her control. She doesn’t get the luxury of moving forward along with the rest of us.   

In this atmosphere the past can become forgotten. We are so busy looking and moving forward that we forget. Yes, inevitably there will be occasions where you are going to take steps backward to continue forward. Heck, sometimes your thrown backwards, through unforeseen events (like the recent episode with Dad). But I think in moving forward, we must also continue to remember the past and not let it fall into the wastelands of history. Dad’s hiccup reminded me of this.