Kinda Morbid Stuff

A few weeks ago the "DC Sniper" - John Allen Muhammad - was executed for murder in Virginia. Over the course of about 3 weeks in the fall of 2002 he and a young accomplice randomly murdered 10 people in the DC metro area, including a woman at a gas station that was less than a mile from our house. I have conflicting feelings about the death penalty, but honestly I'm not sad he's no longer here. It was a surreal few weeks in DC, with people afraid to be out in the open and generally feeling completely helpless and at the mercy of some very disturbed person.

The memories have spawned some recollections of some tragic events in my lifetime, and for some reason I feel compelled to share my perspectives on some of these events with my readers. This will hardly be a feel-good blog entry, but hopefully it will be worthwhile reading so you can get a new "glimpse into Darren's brain." In chronological order:

Challenger disaster, January 28, 1986
One of those moments when you remember exactly where you were when you heard the news. I was in the Senior section of my high school's cafeteria, and someone said that some of the teachers saw the shuttle explode on the TV in the faculty lounge. Life just kinda stopped for a few days. In retrospect I think this was the first time I felt our country wasn't infallible.

Branch Davidian siege, Waco, April 19, 1993
I had just arrived back in the States a few days earlier after having been in Europe for eight months with my Pepperdine program, and had only heard bits and pieces of this story to that point. But on the 19th my dad & I were watching the coverage on CNN and literally watched the fire start at the compound. Immediately we both knew: This was not good. Such an unnecessary turn of events, and the most tragic thing was the 25 children that were lost.

Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995
Two main memories here. First, it was creepy how this happened on the same day as Waco two years earlier. Second, it got slightly personal because I found out a few days later that one of the victims was the wife of a guy I grew up with at our church in NJ. Ronata was Gary's wife, and although I didn't know her since I had not kept in touch with the Woodbridges after leaving NJ, it still stung just a little bit extra.

Diana, August 31, 1997
I was up late watching some TV on a Saturday night, and I was tuned to NBC expecting to see a rerun of Saturday Night Live. However right around 11:30 a breaking news story appeared with Brian Williams at the anchor desk stating that Princess Diana had been seriously injured in a crash, and then just a few short minutes later, it was confirmed that she had died from her injuries. This was the ultimate instance of "Only the Good Die Young." The whole "Candle in the Wind" thing from Elton John would have been kinda corny if it wasn't so appropriate. A light extinguished too soon.

Columbine, April 20, 1999
This was just insane. Two completely deranged teenage psychopaths wreaking deadly havoc on classmates at random. Those surviving students and teachers have to be scarred for life, not to mention the entire community. I guess one positive to take out of this nightmare is the increased awareness on teen angst and hopefully a more proactive approach to dealing with alarming attitudes.

9/11
For my grandparents it was Pearl Harbor. For my parents it was the JFK assassination. For me (and my generation), 9/11 is the defining tragic moment of my lifetime. 2,976 innocents dead in NYC & the Pentagon. This event means different things to different people, but for me it comes back to Fairmount Avenue, the street I grew up on in Chatham, NJ. About a mile up the road from our house, on a clear day, you could see the Twin Towers from our street. On 9/11, all I could think about was that image, and how that image was no longer existent, and how you could probably see the smoke that very day since it was such a nice late-summer day in the tri-state area.

Unfathomable.

Elisa & I were already scheduled to go up to NYC for a Yankees game on Friday 9/28 against the Orioles (it was supposed to be the last weekend of Cal Ripken's career), so we went ahead with the trip and visited Ground Zero that afternoon.

I don't expect to ever again experience a day more surreal.

Two & a half weeks later and the soot/dust was still very much permeating the air. Dust covering the jeans on the shelves of the nearby Levi's store that had turned into a impromptu memorial to tragedy. Sides of buildings covered with flyers that had been posted 16-17 days earlier showing pictures and descriptions of loved ones who were missing. Of course by the time we were there, everyone knew they were all lost.

Over eight years later it remains an incomprehensible day for me.

Sadly I know there are tragedies remaining down the road in my lifetime. May God bless us as we plod along and try to make sense out of senselessness.