Tipped by The Scrapbook at TWS to this Atlantic Monthly piece by Marguerite Kelly, mother of journalist Michael Kelly, who died in Iraq four years ago this month.
Whatever Mike’s take on the Mideast would be today, this much is clear: he knew that holocausts start small; that evil is real; that somebody has to stand up and stop it, and that others must watch and tell the world that evil had really been stopped. And sometimes, he said, good people would die in the doing.That our son was one of them still breaks our hearts, but we can’t say that his death was unfair. If we did, we would have to say that it was unfair that he had enjoyed life so thoroughly; that he had such a fine career, such an excellent wife and such jolly, healthy sons and that he had parents and three sisters who loved him so much. Mike knew you can’t always have it both ways. And so did we.
Life is neither fair nor unfair; it just is. We have no more right to expect it to be perfect than we have to expect perfection in each other.
Speaking of Scrapbook, (and unrelated to the above) read the take on Imus, via Goldstein, both of whom hit the ball out of the park.
Posted by dan at April 21, 2007 12:42 AM