Oh that’s a good one. Adding it to my list. One paragraph really struck me
One of the most despicable religious fallacies is that suffering is ennobling — that it is a step on the path to some kind of enlightenment or salvation. Isabel’s suffering and death did nothing for her, or us, or the world. We learned no lessons worth learning; we acquired no experience that could benefit anyone. And Isabel most certainly did not earn ascension to a better place, as there was no place better for her than at home with her family. Without Isabel, Teri and I were left with oceans of love we could no longer dispense; we found ourselves with an excess of time that we used to devote to her; we had to live in a void that could be filled only by Isabel. Her indelible absence is now an organ in our bodies, whose sole function is a continuous secretion of sorrow.
I am ashamed to say that I am a bit of a collector of depression porn. I’m not sure why; I think it’s because I feel like I don’t have much control over my feelings any more. When I choose to read these, for a brief moment I got to control how I felt.
But there’s another reason we share tragic stories.
Sharing this tragic, horrible, private thing that happened to these poor people is how we cope. Watching this play out in public, among your peers, among other fellow human beings, is what it takes to for all of us to survive and move on. We’re here in this courtroom together because we need to be here. It’s part of the ride.
I’ve heard and seen things in that courtroom I think I will remember for the rest of my life. It’s been difficult to deal with, though I am sure it is the tiniest reflected fraction of what you and your family went through. I am so, so sorry this happened to you. But I want to thank you for sharing it with me, because I now know that I am to blame. We’re all to blame.
That’s what makes us human.
I do not miss that trial at all, but I still think about it a lot. Bearing witness to the tragic, the heroic, the mundane. It’s all part of our shared collective experience.