Oskar Schell Would Be Eighteen Now

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

And I'm not really sure what to think about that.

Last night as I slipped into bed, I heard my mom exclaim the news and run downstairs to watch coverage with my dad. But I was tired and there was school the next day and I don't think that it fully sunk in exactly what his being gone for good really meant. I just wanted to go to bed.

Then today, it was all the buzz in social studies class as people relayed their different versions of what they heard had happened so much to the point that I barely even believed it was true anymore. And when I got home from school and sat down to the computer and saw the headlines on Firefox's homepage and on the cover of The NY Times and rolling across the bottom of our television screen, I realized how fast everything was happening- so much so that I barely had a moment to think about all of it. I knew that I should be thrilled and excited and in the mindset that justice has been served to someone who deserved it more than anyone else in the world. But, as last nights coverage of the thousands of people who went down to ground zero at the earliest hours of the morning to chant "USA" and the national anthem and celebrate the extermination of Bin Laden like it was new years eve, I couldn't help but think how barbaric it was. I know that I should have found the video to be heart-warming and inspirational as I looked into the joyful faces of people who had been so personally scarred by his attack on The World Trade Center. But when I saw their streamers and horns and raised fists and American flags, it seemed like the saddest thing in the world for our country to be celebrating the death of this person as much as we are. Even after what he did, even after who he hurt, how many he hurt, and the cruel ways in which he hurt them.

He was still a person.

Right?

And then I couldn't help but think about how if I- as someone was barely at all personally affected by 9/11 and is likewise not personally harmed or could benefit from Bin Laden's death- was so shaken up and confused by all of this, then how would someone like, say, Oskar Schell react?

Oskar would be 18 now.

Oskar Schell- an adult.

What an impossible thought that is.

Would he be the same? Confused and searching for answers like he was 10 years ago? Would he think the same as me-- that it was wrong to have killed someone no matter who they were?

Or, the more likely of the two, the obvious answer, the response that is only in his natural human nature to have, the thing that makes me almost agree with Bin Laden's killing-

Would he be at Ground Zero- chanting and shouting and grinning at the fact that his dads killer had finally gotten what he deserved?

8 year old Oskar Schell.

So confused.

So scared.

Searching for something to make sense.

To fit in.

To justify it all

Would he be one of those people? Those people whose faces I thought to be barbaric? Is that who they all were-- just "Oskar Schell"s? Angry parents and sons and daughters and husbands and wifes and sisters and brothers and friends who were so hurt and broken- who were changed for good because of what Bin Laden did, whose once happy, carefree 8 year old smiles had been turned into the stone cold face of an angry adult who rejoiced in the killing of another human being?

I can't bear the thought of Oskar Schell being the face that represents all of those people, but I know that- were he real- it would most likely be the side he took. Because it's easy for someone like me who is shielded and unharmed from these horrors to say that killing is bad. But, in reality, how does someone who's childhood was stolen from them ever forgive the person who took it and their father away?

The ending of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, being one of the saddest endings of any book I've ever read, tied up no loose ends. It just further expressed Oskar's vulnerability and anger and confusion about every heartbreaking thing that happened to him in a powerful and affecting way. It showed that he never healed.

We would have been safe

It showed that maybe he, like so many other victims of this tragedy, never would heal.

It confirmed and supported that Oskar would not forgive and forget- he, instead, would be rejoicing over the death of the man who took that precious safe feeling and reality away from him

As I look into the faces of the people who celebrated at Ground Zero last night, I have to try to imagine seeing Oskar Schell and think to myself "would I maybe support them if he was there?". Because, essentially, they are all people just like Oskar Schell, for all I know. Their story is reminiscent of his own. They are people who have reason to be there, even if I don't agree with it. I have to try to see it all from their point of view.

But even then, does standing and celebrating in the spot where it all began really end it? Will killing Bin Laden give anyone closure? Will rejoicing over it ease anyone's pain? And, I don't know the answer to any of that because I've never experienced it before, but in my humble opinion, it really won't. Still, I think it's impossible for someone to go through that and come out in that positive mindset. I can go and preach about this all I want, but the truth is that if I was in their situation, I'd probably do the same, think the same, act the same. Wouldn't I?

How We Deal With Grief

The last few weeks of my reading life have been an absolute dream as I started and finished two of my now favorite books of all time- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. My month has been a marathon of beautiful writing. Although these two books are very different from one another in terms of genre, character-type and writing style, they do share one common and dominant theme- grief. Oskar experiences grief when his father is killed in 9/11, and Joan when her husband of 40 years dies of heart failure.

What struck me so immediately about the character of Oskar Schell was his matter-of-fact attitude and way about everything. Even his fathers death. And watching a nine year old boy not only lose his dad, but address it in the same way that he would address the weather report was almost more painful than if he had sobbed nonstop throughout the story. Because that was his way of dealing with grief- keeping it inside, not dealing with it. Oskar makes sure that everything is clean and tidy on the outside for people to see by not letting out the messy inside thoughts and words and actions and feelings which, I know from experience, is so much more painful. And you have to think about it- was Oskar making this concious decision? Was he choosing to keep it in for the sake of, say, his mom or grandma? No- he's nine years old, his dad just died- he doesn't know what to do or think or who to turn to. He's polite and smart and just not the kind of person who can lash out or break down or show people what he's really going through. He doesn't keep his father's last voicemail's a secret to spare his mother any more pain, he does it because he's terrified and confused and guilty. Because so much responsibility and so much agony has been placed on his tiny shoulders and he's only nine and the only way he knows to deal with grief is what automatically happens- and that's nothing. Because nothing happens if we don't make it happen, and Oskar, not knowing what to make happen, does nothing.

And so it stays inside.

And that's how he deals with grief.

And he's only nine.

And that breaks my heart.

Then there's Joan Didion, whose story is equally heartbreaking in a completely different way. Before I read this book, my theory was that grief was easier as you got older, as you came to expect and anticipate the deaths of friends and spouses who were, like you, nearing the ends of their lives. But this isn't true at all because as Joan says, when you're so in love, you don't see yourself as growing older,

"For Forty years I saw myself through John's eyes. I did not age. This year for the first time since I was twenty nine I saw myself through the eyes of others. This year for the first time since I was twenty nine I realized that my image of myself was of someone significantly younger".

She had spent two thirds of her life with this man, and just because he had to die, didn't make him actually dying any easier. When you come to depend on someone for everything, when you come to realize them as a literal part of you, when not a single day goes by that you don't see this person, talk to this person, touch this person, hug this person in 40 years, how big is the hole they leave behind? And how impossible is it to fill?

But what stands out the most, to me, about her book is that it's a book. That she relived and re-experienced every moment of this event and every feeling that followed for years to make this book. That she published it, releasing to the world her innermost thoughts in the most raw, personal, heartbreaking and beautiful way possible. That this is her way of dealing with grief- the only way she knows- writing.

"Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden, to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind"

"Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief was we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself."

"Life changes in the instant, the ordinary instant"

-Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

And Joan Didion is so right.

Because no one expects death or grief- not how it really turns out to be, at least. And no one knows how to handle it when it does come.

Not even the seemingly most clever and scholarly nine year old boy that ever lived.

Not even the 70 year old woman who's intelligent and experienced and put together.

No one.

Because our minds use logic to make an image of what we think something will be like or feel like or look like, and there is nothing logical about grief. Because as much as we may plan or organize or try to control how our lives will play out, what happens happens. And when faced with crisis, it's hard to stick to your plans.