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The Joker illustrates his point to Jim Gordon, from atop the super creepy baby throne.
(All images copyright DC comics) |
It was right there, all the time. This idea. That letting go completely would be so comforting. It's hard.
H. and I are people of no particular faith. I can absolutely see the comfort it gives. I really can. I envy it. People like H. and I navigate life by trying to do the right thing, and trying to reach together a definition of the right thing.
This idea. That letting go completely would be so comforting.Maybe catatonia, maybe just some sort of screaming fit and into the huggy jacket.Which takes me to my point, I guess.
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| "Very well. Shall I show you to your room, or would you prefer to be dragged off kicking and screaming?" "Ooh, kicking and screaming please!" |
I hear religious folks say things about atheists or those of no particular faith, and one that really confuses me has to do with responsibility.
"Wow, if you don't have God, what keeps you from just doing whatever you want all the time?"
This one is a real stumper for me. Not that I don't have answers for it; the answers are like Three Stooges trying to fit through a one-Stooge door at once. I get stumped on which direction to go with it. I try to not go the, "Holy shit, you just told me that only the thought that God is watching you constantly keeps you from harvesting my organs for sausage!" direction. I try to steer towards the other direction.
I have to live with everything I do, as does H. We can't just assign failures to "it wasn't God's will" or "it just wasn't meant to be". H. and I did everything we could at every step, made intricate well informed plans...and they swirled into chaos at the moment my son was born, and then it was the two of us in the trenches again. Everything seeming to hinge on our decisions...endless quiet conversations in muffled rooms. We navigated a beige maze of sad faces; watching smiles slide off peoples' faces and get replaced with the semi-smile/tragi-comic mask that says "How you holdin' up?" just before the person actually does. It's a bizarre space to live in, and big chunks of it are already lost to me; the stress of watching my son live through tubes and fight so hard for a week; the up and downs and alarms. It's a situation that can give you a form of PTSD; it's why they call it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. H. and I used to jerk awake on the edge of sleep; constantly worried an alarm was going off...that the phone was ringing and we needed to go.
So when the worst thing ever happened, I thought of Jim Gordon. Tortured, on the edge of madness. Has seen something truly terrible happen to his daughter, and I could soooooo relate. Right there, at the edge of my dazed vision, was the Joker, singing.
Go Loony! Lyrics by Alan Moore (taken from "the Killing Joke").
"When the world is full of care
And every headline screams despair,
All is rape, starvation, war and life is vile
Then there's a certain thing I do
Which I shall pass along to you,
That's always guaranteed to make me smile:
I go loo-oo-oony as a light-bulb battered bug!
Simply loo-oo-oony, sometimes foam and chew the rug!
Mister, life is swell
In a padded cell,
It'll chase those blues away:
You can trade your gloom
For a rubber room
And injections twice a day!
Just go loo-oo-oony like an acid casualty,
Or a moo-oo-oonie, or a preacher on T.V.
When the human race Wears an anxious face,
When the bomb hangs overhead,
When your kid turns blue,
It won't worry you,
You can smile and nod instead.
When you're loo-oo-oony, then you just don't give a fig,
Man's so pu-uu-uny, and the universe so big!
If you hurt inside,
Get certified,
And if life should treat you bad,
Don't get ee-ee-eeven, get mad!!"
So, I guess my answer is I learned it from things like comic books, and movies, and books, and life. From examples like Jim Gordon. Who wouldn't back down, who wouldn't break. Who ordered Batman to capture the Joker alive, even after everything he did.
"We have to show him that our way works."
So H. and I walked the walk. We tried as hard as we could to make the entire thing as positive as we could. We held our son, and sang to him. We read books to him. We spent his whole life living at the hospital, in a nightmare of whispers; surrounded by quiet, sad faces and alarms. When he passed, we tried to make the most of that, too.
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