Thought Picnic: It was a Black Valentine

A Black Valentine

In one week, I have written nothing and a lot has happened since I penned the piece about My Funny Valentine in the earnest desire for love, company and companionship.

However, as we woke into the morning of St. Valentine’s Day of the year 2013, 4 shots reverberated round the world as it became an echo chamber of a tragedy that still leaves many in shock but worse still, the irreparable losses, the loss of freedoms to love, to live and to roam – it is all too sad.

She started the night before in the arms of her love and by daybreak she was in the arms of her Lord, the whole episode unfolding like a horrific thriller with both entombed in the ground and in a cell, the former we must never forget for the enduring glory of the latter.

Guns with irrational backbone

One cannot comment on the specifics of the case but one thing is evident, regardless of the status of whoever was caught enclosed and defenceless in that place, that person would have ended up dead, be the person an intruder or a lover and that for me is unacceptable aggression in the face of somewhat irrational fear predicated on the assumed extreme vulnerability of the perpetrator.

Guns appear to give people an unusual sense of bravado and daring where other defence mechanisms to seek help or flee, and I mean flee will kick in.

Four gunshots was four gun shots too many, too determined, too irrational, too demonstrative, too controlling and too self-assured of dealing with a situation. We may never know the mind of the how and why but result is devastating enough that the absence of a sense of great remorse of what was essentially avoidable will never be acceptable.

My sympathies are with the victim, totally

One must not stand to judge, but between the extremes of the benign of the fear of an assumed intruder and it must be clear that this was not fighting off an intruder and the unfortunate pall of spousal abuse resulting in a fatality all too common in many places around the world, my sympathies are squarely with the victim regardless of provocation; no non-aggressive provocation where the other party does not present an existential threat to life should have anyone ending up in the morgue.

The circus of love ended on Valentine’s Day and what we have now for entertainment is the circus of the macabre, it is almost as unwatchable as it is reprehensible as the media feeding frenzy has settled down south on a basic gavel hearing that has now stretched into the fourth day.

For all the accolades, glory and heroic feats of determination and achievement that dogs the principal and masks his attendant foibles, weaknesses and shortcomings, none of which must be discounted with the flippant wave of the hand, my thoughts, my pains and my heartache are with Reeva Steenkamp, her bereaved family, the death of the life force of an amazing dream and the many partners who have by pre-meditation or inadvertently fallen at the hands of the person they chose to love.

Rest well – Reeva Steenkamp.