The Photograph
There is a photograph that haunts me. It is a newspaper picture of my parents in court. Next to them is Marty. Back then, he was my sister’s husband.
I am not in this picture. I spent time in the hospital with my sister, and in her home to look after her small child, but I did not go to court. I had my own home, husband, and children to look after—and a job. And it took me two hours each way to drive from my home to be with her.
My sister is not in this picture. Unable to speak, unable to move, unaware of the battle being waged for her life and her health, she could not fight for herself. Her family had to fight for her.
Her antagonists are not in this picture. Those self-righteous defenders of the unborn, who claimed to be my sister’s friends, who said they were there to “help” her, who had never met her and would never bear the burden of her child’s care, who meddled in our family’s tragedy and neither cared nor understood what damage they did. What is in the picture, clearly visible on the faces of my parents, engraved like masks of tragedy, is the pain those men chose not to see.
I would have hurt those strangers in return. But I wasn’t in court, and I never met them.
They wanted to save Nancy’s unborn baby. My parents were there to save my sister, their baby. Nancy’s condition was grave, her prognosis uncertain. All Mom and Dad wanted was the best possible treatment for her. All they wanted was hope. All they wanted was to have their daughter back again.
Every hour that Mom and Dad spent in court was an hour they couldn’t be at her side, talking to her, massaging her immobile arms and legs, monitoring her condition for signs of life. Once, Mom thought a finger moved.
I have never hated anyone the way I hated those two right-to-life advocates. They claimed they wanted to help, but they approached us as adversaries. Every time I saw one of them on TV or in a newspaper, I felt rage. In my aerobics class, when we swung punches, I imagined I was hitting them. Twice a week I entered my gym rigid with tension and left completely relaxed.
Years later, in a workshop, I had to think of someone I hated; for a moment, I drew a blank, and then I remembered Broderick and Short, and the emotion gripped me.
If I were truly enlightened, I would forgive them.
