I switched the radio as I drove the 60 westbound towards my office to NPR because I didn’t feel like bothering with a podcast or listening to all the NFL games rehashed ad nauseam. They said a killer had mowed down some 40 or more people and injured hundreds of others at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. My Aunt works in that casino as a Pit Boss. So as I listened to details I became increasingly concerned.
A couple of years ago she had gotten me passes to go see some singer at “The Beach,” at Mandalay Bay. I remember watching and listening to the show and looking back up over my shoulder at the façade of the hotel with all those windows where anyone might be looking down on the spectacle, perhaps unable to hear the music. I imagined this shooter spraying The Beach with so many bullets from an AK-47. I thought of my Aunt, who is as fun loving a person as there is, and her affinity for country music and how she always ends up getting a picture with the celebrity who happens into the casino. (Just a couple of weeks earlier she could be seen on Facebook with one of the big boxers and a couple of years ago when my beloved Kings won the Stanley Cup she sent me pictures of her with one of our players a few days after the victory.)
I worried she might have been there. I did not yet know the event the monster aimed his weapon at was across the street. So I called. No answer. I texted her: “Aunt Laura-I trust you are okay?” Nothing. I called again, this time not leaving a voice mail. Then after some more driving as I arrived at work I texted her eldest son, my cousin Frank: “Cousin. Have you heard from your Mom?” He said he was calling her right then. I responded by telling him I had called-no answer. I said it was probably a crazy scene and maybe she had only gotten to bed a couple of hours ago and so she was probably sleeping.
Frank called me 90 minutes later. He said he had spoken to his youngest brother, Vinny, and that Aunt Laura was fine. When she was evacuated, he said, they did not let her go get her purse or her cell phone or anything…
It was an odd couple of hours to start the day. I consumed the requisite news stories about the person, the victims and the events around the tragedy. I knew my Aunt was okay. I expected she was inside the casino and not across the street at a country music concert. Still, I contemplated her death and I contemplated my own death and I considered so many deaths and I struggled with the tragedy that was.
I imagined this destroyer and I wondered what he was like as a boy. He was 64, I thought? 64? I had rage all the way to 40 and I think I was an outlier. Men should be angry in their 20s but 64? What was he like as a child? Was he a demon-seed? Did he know laughter and the unbearable lightness of being? Did he love? Was he loved? I mean real love-did he ever feel like he would die for someone if it came down to it, if a deranged man was shooting from atop a perch into a crowd for example? Did he ever love someone like that?
I don’t want to think of this ghoul of a man as simply that. I don’t want to just say, evil, and let it be that. I don’t want to earmark as monster and move on. I want the gun control but gun control is certainly not enough for me. When he was a baby was he evil? When he soldiered into his 1st grade classroom sans his mama was he a monster then, too? When he had his first kiss? I can’t humanize what is human. I want to know what happened. I am quite sure as a baby he just wanted love and to give love back. What the fuck happened to a man that he meticulously plans to amass a stockpile of artillery in a hotel room for the purpose of reigning fire down upon the heads of so many human revelers, out for the evening with their favorite partners and friends, enjoying the end of Summer with the soundtrack of their lives, killing them en masse? What twisted him and made him into such an aberration?
I felt relief from the mounting tension when I did not know. I eased back into a project I was working on and finally made some progress. Right around lunchtime a coworker walked into my office and informed me Tom Petty had died. Tom Petty, I marveled? Hadn’t I just watched like a 4-hour documentary on this guy a few months ago on Netflix? Wasn’t he relatively young? I googled and quickly discovered it was true. Cardiac arrest. Death in heaping portions this morning.
Thing is I am not a big Tom Petty enthusiast. I think of Refugee as a classic song for sure. A couple of others were good. I had put American Girl on a cd we played during childbirth for Terra. Still, death is. Tom Petty, cut down at 66.
Later after picking up the kids from school on the drive home I played a song by REM; The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight. Those lyrics. I explained to Mark in the back seat who Michael Stipe is. I said this singer is kind of retired now as he’s getting a bit long of tooth, (Mark loves when I use outdated colloquialisms.) Mark liked the song, which pleased me to no end.
When Mark or Terra likes the song I feel capable of living on. When I read those rock and roll biographies there is always that step dad who turned Jeff Buckley on to led Zeppelin at an early age, or the Dad who loved opera, or what have you. I think of my own Dad and how born again he was and opposed to all things rock and roll, but every now and then he would let it slip. What?! His favorite song when he was in high school was Time is on My Side by the Stones?! Or when Bob Dylan went all Christian I discovered he knew all these songs I had never heard of. Everybody Must Get Stoned, indeed…
This is life. These are the things of life. And now that Michael Stipe is retired, now that my occasional glimpse is limited to him popping up all tarot card Hermit looking on Stephen Colbert’s show to sing a duet with the host. Now that I ponder this great American Singer, and think back to the time he wore all those t-shirts on the VMA's, or consider how fiercely private he is about aspects of his life. I realize now that my respect for Michael Stipe is nothing short of love. It is ardor and adoration for sure but it is love. There are a million possibilities for how one conducts himself in public or how one accepts celebrity. Michael Stipe’s way has been one of utter integrity.
Michael Stipe once said his favorite REM song was Fall On Me. That is my favorite REM song, too. It is a simply profound protest. As we headed home I sang along knowing Mark was memorizing lyrics. He has a gift for that, I think.
“Today I need something more sub-sub-sub-substantial,” I sang. “A can of beans or black-eyed peas, some Nescafe and ice.” It felt good to sing these words. I had not listened to this song in forever. REM, such artists. Incorporating The Lion Sleeps Tonight, into their modern pop song and also drawing on myriad references from Americana and life in these times. “A candy bar, a falling star, or a reading of Dr. Seuss.” At the mention of Dr. Seuss a mass of emotion roiled in my stomach and chest suddenly, like nausea or joy or a car crash. I reached inward past the wave of emotion to draw the composure I needed to stifle my Mini breakdown.
I know the reference to Dr. Seuss piqued Mark’s interest. I could see he was listening intently back there. Terra was listening too but Mark was dialed in and I know this reference to someone he knows and appreciates resonated with him even if he did not quite understand the context.
So it was I drove down Santa Anita Avenue stifling the urge to cry. I would cry because I love my son and I want to influence him so positively. My ego would also cry at the longing to be remembered. I would cry because Michael Stipe is a beautiful, dignified man of the world I too, inhabit. I would cry for my Aunt, who continues to be of my closest family and my primary link to a Mother who departed a long, long time ago. I would cry at the thought of my Aunt crying until noon the following day. (Her heart is tender-she has always cried so easily.) I would cry for so many victims, too many victims, lives cut short and interrupted by dark, random chaos, by deep psychosis. I would cry for their people, so angry and confused and disillusioned and, angry. And sadsad. Profoundly sad. Depression… I would cry too upon hearing the stories of people who held dying strangers for two hours as they slowly succumbed. I could cry at the remarkable beauty, the random acts of love seen or unseen but always there with our kind. I would cry at the consideration of how a person takes on such darkness, contemplates such evil and acts upon it.
The kids asked a few questions about the horror in Las Vegas. Terra shared something she heard from one of the youth leaders at the Y. I explained that the shooter was obviously ill in a way that is hard to comprehend and I let them know Aunt Laura was okay. I showed them the picture of my Aunt next to the CNN reporter in the aftermath. Terra asked if the reporter interviewed her. Mark did not recognize Aunt Laura. And so it is emotional days happen...
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| Aunt Laura behind reporter mid-evacuation |
In the aftermath if I cry I will cry from counting my blessings. I will cry at the richness of life that is my children and my career and my avocations. I will cry at my good health. I will cry at the luxury of crying. I will cry at the knowledge that Everybody Hurts.
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