Eulogy for Brad Will
On Sunday, as my wife Tana and I were traveling home from a workshop, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness that seemed to come from nowhere. I took out my pendulum to dowse where it was coming from. Tana and I asked about friend after friend, but the pendulum only swung in the circles that indicate a "No" response to me.
However, when Tana asked about “world pain,” the pendulum suddenly changed its swing to a straight, front-and-back line to indicate "Yes." This felt like it might be correct; however, the sadness did not seem precognitive, and I knew of nothing in the world that would trigger new sadness in me.
Later that evening, we learned of the death of Brad Will, the video journalist who was murdered by the Mexican government in Oaxaca--the cousin our friend Delta. Delta used to baby-sit for Brad, and while she had learned of Brad’s death the night before, it did not hit her until Sunday afternoon, as we drove home. Delta is dear to us, and our minds are entangled. The sadness is explained.
But the sadness has only intensified since then. I looked Brad up on the Indy Media site: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/10/354501.html which provided a more complete story of Brad and his death than the mainstream media. In the pictures on Indy Media’s site, I saw a man who lived his life in solidarity with the poor. I saw their love for him.
I saw the nastiness of the assassins who had arrived at the murder scene, loaded for bear. I saw Brad lying on the ground, his stomach wound bleeding, his friends around him in horror. I saw a teary-eyed crowd of people rushing him to the hospital on their backs.
And I cried for Brad, a hero, a man of compassion, idealism, bravery, and love. And my sadness grew.
On October 30, I watched the news magazine "Democracy Now" as they devoted an entire hour to Brad and his life of activism, and I sobbed again. (http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl?issue=20061030 ) I watched the videotape that Brad had filmed as his assassins ran up and shot him. I watched as Brad tried to right the camera to continue doing his job after he fell. And I saw the moment when he dropped the camera and it lay still on the cement, filming without intent.
I was at work, but I couldn’t work. Nor could I explain to my co-workers why I was sobbing. The day before, when the sadness began for me, I didn’t even know who Brad Will was. But now I was grieving him like a brother.
Why? Was it merely that our minds are entangled with Delta who once babysat Brad? Or did I recognize him from another life? Most of my most recent lifetimes have been stumbling clumsily towards spirituality, except for one brief lifetime when I died fighting Franco among the Basque anarcho-syndicalists. Brad was an anarchist in this lifetime. Did we fight together in that one?
Or have I been crying because the Brads of this world are so rare in this time of planetary need, when we're now heading into another election that will be again stolen, when our country has chosen the path of evil, fascism, and war, when the possibility exists that the ice fields of Greenland will slide off of that continent in the next ten years, raising the oceans around the world by ten feet, making Katrina look like a picnic? I don't have to recite the litany. We all know it.
Does my deep, hurting connection with this man who died before we could meet reflect the fact that we as a planet need him? Do I mourn Brad because we as a culture need all the help we can get to hold back el mundo malo and help awaken us to el mundo bueno?
And when I finally I think that I'm done grieving for this stranger, the scab is ripped open again, and again, and again, for instance when a friend sent me a eulogy for Brad by Starhawk. (http://www.starhawk.org/activism/activism-writings/brad_will.html ) And I sit at my desk at work, and I cannot work because I'm sobbing at her memories of the folk song he sang at a Reclaiming ritual.
So I feel angry, and I open up a browser window on my computer to lodge my protest as part of an electronic sit-in (http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/oaxaca/basta.htm ), and I open another protest window on my work computer and another on my wife's computer.
But it all seems so inadequate. I just don't know what to do with these tears.
Cougar
