July 17, 2024
It could be said that, in some
ways, my life has been shaped by the ripple effects of trauma.
I’m a child of the 60s. I was
14 in 1968. That was the year I came to the conclusion that life was going to
hell in the proverbial handbasket and we were all doomed.
Much like I feel at times in
this ultra modern year of 2024.
By 1968 I was interested in
American politics. My father had died in January of 1962. As my mother and I
watched the news coverage of the assassination of JFK, the only thing I
remember her saying to me at the time was that the late President was the same
age as my daddy had been when he died. I was only 9 years old when JFK was
murdered. It left a mark. I became fascinated by the family, likely because my
mother had inadvertently given me a connection to them with her comment.
I submit to you that the nine-year-old
in 1963 was a far more naïve creature than is the one in 2024.
I confess that I was into American
politics probably more than a Canadian child had any right to be. I was
appalled in April of 1968 by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. I
watched his funeral and felt a moment of gratitude that walking in that
procession, clearly grieving himself, was the brother of the slain American
president. That he showed his respect that way, and that he was in turn respected
by all those grieving men and women, made an impact on me. I began to be aware
of racism and I was further appalled.
I was only a child; I had
never met a person of color until I was 14. But I knew my mother worked with
nurses who were women of color. There was Miss Saunders, of whom I’d heard very
positive accounts, and I knew that she was black—I had met her just after I began
to volunteer as a candy striper in 1968 on the weekends at the hospital where
my mother worked. And I also knew, from visiting my mother’s ward that there
were nurses from the Philippines and even one from Jamaica.
After Dr. King’s
assassination, and after seeing news coverage of the race riots following that
tragedy, I asked Mother if she thought of them as being persons of colour. She
told me no, she thought of them as being nurses. I found her response
completely correct, and that became my attitude, too.
When RFK was assassinated just
two months later, I was shattered. I remember going to my high school in the
aftermath and telling one of my teachers, who asked why I looked so sad, that
the world was just going to hell and was probably going to end at any minute
now.
By the way, I didn’t ignore
Canadian politics. In June of 1968, I volunteered to distribute fliers for the very
first national heartthrob of my lifetime—Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who was a
candidate to be Prime Minister. I happened to live, at the time, very close to
a race car track (they had stock car races once a week in the summer). It was
my contribution to see to it that every single car parked in the parking lot
bore a P.E.T. flier. That limited involvement was the only thing I could think
to do in response to the death, earlier that same month, of RFK. My involvement
was limited, because we lived in the sticks at the time, and there was no bus service,
except for the school bus that took me into town each weekday.
All these years later, and I
am still trying to understand how the traumatic events of my early years—the deaths
of my own father, and three very prominent fathers of other children—determined
my life’s course. Or if not its course, most surely its emotional
underpinnings.
I have grown up believing that
violence is never the answer to any problem. It’s a separate yet related
problem all its own. And it sure as hell never truly solved anything. Changed
things, oh most assuredly. Solved a problem? Made things better?
I am not convinced that,
through the entirety of human history that such has ever been the case. And
just to answer a question that may come to mind, no, Jesus Christ was not murdered.
He laid down His life for us
all—which is what a True Savior does.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
No comments:
Post a Comment