The Unknown Victim (p235-p238)

(Setting:  A lonely woman in the heartland of America learns the hard way that war is not a distant event with anonymous victims.)

To assuage this angst, a memorial for the non-war in Asia was constructed. It was an enormous black granite wall with the names of all that had died in Vhaicam etched into dark stone. People came to touch it, to place flowered wreathes, and to somberly remember lost loved ones. But the monument didn’t sufficiently salve America’s accumulated grief. The victims of other wars also deserved remembrance. So, additional miles of black granite walls were constructed with millions of names etched into their seemingly endless obsidian surfaces, memorializing the victims of Kosovo, Somalia, Beirut, the Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea, World War II, World War I, the Civil War, and the Spanish American War.

But even this massive granite commemoration was insufficient. The urge to remember inspired an eruption of monuments dedicated to all governmental and religious violence throughout history. The Jews incinerated by Hitler got their monument. The Russian peasants murdered by Stalin got theirs. The Irish farmers starved to death by the British landowners got theirs. The native Americans got theirs. The victims of the Spanish Inquisition got theirs. The men who fell on both sides during the Crusades got theirs. The Mayans sacrificed to their gods in mass burials got theirs. The blacks that starved in African Marxist dictatorships got theirs. The slaves who died in coffin ships got theirs. The victims of the SS, the KGB, the CIA, and other secret polices of the world got theirs.

This urge to construct monuments to memorialize man's organized inhumanity would have exhausted the country’s granite quarries, if an anonymous person hadn’t cleverly suggested building a generic monument to commemorate all victims of organized atrocity. The monument served the same purpose as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, so it became known as the Tomb of the Unknown Victim. It was built on the tidal basin near East Potomac Park, and featured a shimmering reflection of the Jefferson Memorial. It bore a tantalizing epitaph: "If people universally pursue peace, perhaps governments and religions will get out of their way and let them have it. If they beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks, and their chains into tinsel, perhaps organized oppression will vanish and nations will no longer wield arms against each other or their own citizens."

The Unknown Victim had no name or place of birth. But, despite its silent anonymity, the Unknown Victim had a Message of incalculable importance for the rest of humanity. Its tale wasn’t told by words, but rather by the unyielding finality of the black-as-death tombstone marking its figurative resting-place. This unwritten Message was very simple: "Here lies a man slain by believers of myths".

The Message from the Unknown Victim would be ignored for a long time. More victims would follow, with more woeful tales to tell. However, a few people understood the message, such as the ancient Croesus, who said, "No one is so senseless as to choose of his own will war rather than peace, since in peace sons bury their fathers, and in war, fathers bury their sons."

One woman in particular learned the common sense of the Message. Late on a wintry night in the heartland of America, with an icy wind knifing through the darkness, she rocked herself slowly in front of a dying fire. She was not alone, although no one was with her. Her company that evening was a memory, represented by a Teddy Bear cradled tenderly in her arms, a stuffed effigy of something very dear lost. With the bear hugged tightly against her bosom, she heard the faint voice of a little boy saying "Mommy, I love you". The gentle echo of this refrain kept time with the rocking chair as her mind's eye watched her son do little boy things. He climbed and he jumped and he ran, with the abandon of a youth that knows no mortality. He pretended and he imagined and he dreamed, with the creativity of a child to whom life is an endless panorama of potential. Large tears squirted out of his innocent round eyes and ran swiftly down his pristine cheeks, from the pain of scrapes and bruises earned as badges of childhood daring and exploration. His lip quivered as he explained how the neighborhood bully stole his snack and pushed him down. His faced beamed like a lighthouse as he described the home run he hit at the ballpark.

These images unfurled through her mind like a poorly produced home video. Tears ran from her reddened eyes down care worn cheeks and dripped quietly onto the Teddy Bear’s mottled fur. She wanted desperately to see that little boy again, to run her fingers through his disheveled hair, to wipe the tear from his cheek, to comfort him, to hug him, to feel the love flowing through his tiny arms embracing her torso. She wanted so badly to rock him in that chair, as she had so many years ago, feeling his tiny heart lightly thumping against her bosom as her own heart thumped out a passionate response of pure love. She yearned to place his tiny mouth against her bare breast again, to pass on her life giving milk as his marsh mallow hand instinctively caressed her face. She yearned to sing a gentle lullaby to him while his frail body drifted into peaceful sleep, with pleasantly pungent baby breath wafting noiselessly from his lips. She yearned to look deep into his infinitely trusting eyes to understand the meaning of joy again.

But it was never to be. She had received the Message sent vicariously by the Unknown Victim. A military officer delivered an impersonal telegram announcing that her son had been killed in Vhaicam. It proclaimed that he died bravely defending Ismism, and that she and the entire nation should be proud. But those were just the written words. She locked onto the unwritten words passed on telepathically from the Unknown Victim. Her son didn’t die in glorious defense of Ismism. He died for no reason at all. The meaning of life wasn’t to be found in the self-sacrificial defense of any mythological ism. The meaning of life was to be found in the love between mother and child, which was now lost forever for this woman.

After the military officer uncomfortably dismissed himself, the woman slowly tore up the telegram and collapsed to the floor in abject grief from which she would never fully recover. At the funeral of her son, she placed flowers on his tombstone. Attached to the bouquet was a tear-stained note, written in shaky cursive. The note was an emotional echo of the ethereal Message from the Unknown Victim. It said simply, "To my son. Since your eyes were closed, mine have never ceased to cry."

If Croesus were still alive, he would have acknowledged that there is only one thing worse in this existence than a father burying his son. It is a mother burying her son.