(no subject)
Tragic news today. A young man was shot and killed in Northern Thailand. The Thai police officer who shot him claims that he was breaking up a fight between the man and his girlfriend when his gun went off accidentally, shooting the man in his face and stomach and the woman in the chest. The young woman's story is different. She says that they were walking down the street when a man accosted her and hit her in the face. The young man pushed him and he grabbed a gun and shot them both. Neither story feels like the whole story to me. The policeman's story sounds implausible; the young woman's incomplete. Why would the man have accosted her? Was this really that random? What really happened?
I was supposed to have met the young man at Christmastime, but he decided not to come to the family gatering as he was flying back to Thailand later that day. He was the nephew of my step-father's brother-in-law. His name was Leo. His uncle talked about him proudly and said it was a shame that we hadn't had a chance to meet and talk about a country we both had spent some time in and loved.
My step-father's sister called today in tears. She wanted me to promise I would never go back there, that if I stayed away from Thailand, I would be safer. She wanted me to tell her that it was a horrible place, that Leo had been wrong to want to go back, that he had been wrong when he said that the people there were wonderful. I couldn't say that. I felt inadequate in the face of her grief, saying all the stupid, true but meaningless things we say to people when someone's died: "It was a horrible tragedy. I feel so badly for the family. You all must be thankful that you had time with him over the holidays. Blah blah blah."
After my mom spoke to her, she told me she was glad that I was home, that she would be freaking out and demanding my return to Canada if I had still been there when this happened. I tried to convince her that there must be more to this than the surface story. Maybe the young woman was involved in something we don't know anything about. Maybe she had some kind of relationship with this policeman. Maybe Leo just got stuck in the middle of something he didn't really understand. I think I wanted her to see a difference between this situation and my own. I wanted her to think that maybe someone's bad judgment had put the couple in this situation.
But now I think it was less about me wanting my mom to believe it and more about me. I want a nice tidy explanation, a cause and effect. That someone lost their life in a random crossing of paths is just too difficult to understand.
I was supposed to have met the young man at Christmastime, but he decided not to come to the family gatering as he was flying back to Thailand later that day. He was the nephew of my step-father's brother-in-law. His name was Leo. His uncle talked about him proudly and said it was a shame that we hadn't had a chance to meet and talk about a country we both had spent some time in and loved.
My step-father's sister called today in tears. She wanted me to promise I would never go back there, that if I stayed away from Thailand, I would be safer. She wanted me to tell her that it was a horrible place, that Leo had been wrong to want to go back, that he had been wrong when he said that the people there were wonderful. I couldn't say that. I felt inadequate in the face of her grief, saying all the stupid, true but meaningless things we say to people when someone's died: "It was a horrible tragedy. I feel so badly for the family. You all must be thankful that you had time with him over the holidays. Blah blah blah."
After my mom spoke to her, she told me she was glad that I was home, that she would be freaking out and demanding my return to Canada if I had still been there when this happened. I tried to convince her that there must be more to this than the surface story. Maybe the young woman was involved in something we don't know anything about. Maybe she had some kind of relationship with this policeman. Maybe Leo just got stuck in the middle of something he didn't really understand. I think I wanted her to see a difference between this situation and my own. I wanted her to think that maybe someone's bad judgment had put the couple in this situation.
But now I think it was less about me wanting my mom to believe it and more about me. I want a nice tidy explanation, a cause and effect. That someone lost their life in a random crossing of paths is just too difficult to understand.