Sudden Death

The news from across the country this weekend, of course, was not good.

The death of a young Kennedy was merely a prelude to even more sudden death: the collapse of a beach wall in Southern California; and then mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.

The newspapers report the number of dead and injured, but the true number of those severely affected is, of course, radically higher.

I know this is true because 51 years ago, I joined their ranks.

I’ve written about this a few times over the years, but it seems appropriate to revisit the topic now.

On September 17, 1968, my grandfather, Walter Graubart, was traveling on business in Chicago.

He was a diamond dealer, and he was carrying, as I understand it, a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of goods with him on the trip.

Apparently someone in his field “fingered” him to the Chicago Mob, and he was murdered in his hotel room at the Statler Hilton, that night.

My grandmother learned this when she received a call in the middle of the night from the New York Post, asking her to comment on the murder.

These are people who escaped the Holocaust by the skin of their teeth, and who lost virtually all of their immediate relatives to the Nazis.

Half a century later, I still wake up in the middle of the night, thinking about why they had to kill him. Couldn’t they have just taken the diamonds are left?

These recurrent thoughts become stronger after the kinds of events that happened this weekend, events happening these days with increasing frequency.

One insane person filled with hatred immediately transformed the lives of not a handful of victims but thousands of people.

Remember the Las Vegas concert shooting?

The son of a friend of mine, a young man I’ve known since he was an adolescent, was at that concert.

His psychological challenges from witnessing that horror continue.

The Presidential candidates, never ones to fail to make use of a good tragedy, are trying to use these for political gain.

That’s typical, but when you think about it, it’s also sickening.

Long after the politicians and the cameras and the commentators have moved on, the thousands of people who are related to the victims, or their friends, or their neighbors, or their schoolmates, will be left alone with their memories of their trauma.

From my perspective, half a century after I was in inducted into this group, I can assure you that the real pain never goes away.

I wonder if the gunmen could really envision just how much damage they do, whether they might holster their weapons and stay home.

I doubt it.

What did they say on Hill Street Blues?

Let’s all be careful out there.