Perfection Wasted: R.I.P. Joshua

A friend got news yesterday that her son, Joshua, had been killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan.

I never met Joshua. But all the day long, I've found myself in moments of grief and tears ... for his loss, the agony his mother must be feeling, and (selfishly) for myself, imagining how I would feel if I ever got news of the death of one of my precious daughters.

I lost a buddy from basic training in the first war in Iraq in 1991, and though I grieved for him, and still honor him every Memorial Day, his death didn't affect me the way Joshua's death did.

You see, I wasn't a parent yet.

And Joshua's death has me considering the agony of all the other mothers and fathers and siblings and grandparents who have had to endure the death of a loved one.

The grief is made the worse by my frustration over the lack of any clear, achievable end to the fighting in Afghanistan, and the inevitability of the world's loss of many more men and women such as Joshua.

So, curse you, George W. Bush. And curse your your administration, which initiated this deadly and wasteful folly in Afghanistan and Iraq.

May history show you for what you are, and condemn you for the debacle, debt, death and anguish you leave as a legacy for generations.

To Joshua ... whom I never met.

Perfection Wasted
By John Updike

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market --
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories
packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act.

Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.