Collateral Damage

Sliding into the booth across from me, we exchanged pleasantries common between two people meeting for the first time.

Megan* had reached out wanting to share a story from her own life, a hard truth she'd had to accept about someone she had loved and admired.

"My grandfather raised me, did everything he could to provide for me," she started, leaning forward into her hands clasped together atop the table. "He taught me we judge people by how they treat us, their actions, how they conduct themselves as they move through the world. It doesn't matter what they look like, where they come from, who they pray or don't pray to, their abilities or their disabilities... 

"He wanted me to understand why some people in our family did not deserve our time any longer. They might have our common history, they might look like us, but they had made choices that meant we did not give them our time or consideration any longer."

I was nodding, "He sounds like a smart man."

"Right," she hesitated, then continued, "So he raised me from a small child. Yet it wasn't until high school," she paused again, momentarily pressing her lips together in a serious line. "It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I realized he was a racist."

Raising my eyebrows, I asked in surprise, "What happened?"

"Prom, senior year," she explained. "A guy friend and I decided to attend together. We weren't dating or anything, though maybe that would have been the start of something..."

Her voice and her gaze trailed off momentarily as if staring down the road of unrealized possibilities. With a small shake of her head, she went on, "He was of Japanese descent. And my grandfather ... when he found out he lost his mind, completely forbid my going with him, embarrassed my friend, made offensive comments about my friend, his family.

"I was shocked, horrified. I can't even adequately explain how incongruous his outburst was to the man I thought him to be until that moment."

She paused, looking directly at me. Her eyes were bright, reflecting burning tears which would not fall. Whether they were from embarrassment or pain or some combination of both I couldn't be certain. I was at a loss for what to say.

Clearing her throat, she continued, "Anyway, our relationship was permanently damaged by that moment. We kind of moved past it to get through graduation the next month, then my send off to college a few months later, but I couldn't forgive him. I couldn't reconcile his words with, well, anything he had taught me growing up. I decided he was a fraud, a monster.

"His words in regards to my friend were so vile. I wanted nothing to do with him. I was heartbroken, I was enraged,... I went to college and we just talked less and less as the years went on. I let that natural moment of increased adolescent distance turn into a permanent divide."

"I bet that was difficult," I offered.

She nodded, but then shook her head. "I was indignant and very young. At the time it didn't feel difficult, it just felt like the only right answer to his gross conduct."

Leaning back in the booth, she went on, "About five years after college graduation I received a call from my grandfather's cousin saying he was in the hospital. Prognosis was positive, but she knew he'd love to see me."

"Did you go?"

"I went," she confirmed. "He wasn't fully conscious. His cousin stood on one side of the bed; I was across from him on the other. We were each holding one of his hands. His cousin told him I was there and to squeeze my hand if he could hear us. He squeezed my hand."

She blinked hard at the memory, tears dropping silently from her eyes. Reaching for a napkin, she continued, "Afterward his cousin and I stepped out into the hallway of the hospital. She thanked me for visiting him. Told me I was the pride of his life and knew, once he got out, that he would love to see me more."

"Did she know why you two had fallen out?"

"If she didn't know, I told her then," she replied, then fell silent, looking off in the distance for a moment. 

"What was her response?" I wondered.

"She told me they were young teenagers when Pearl Harbor was bombed."

I blinked, at first not comprehending the relevance. 

"Although her family wasn't with his when she found out, she said she imagined his experience was similar to hers: hearing the radio broadcasts, the hushed and passionate discussions of the adults around them, the awareness they were going to war as their children were on the brink of coming of age. Then as the days passed and the stories from that morning were broadcast, the death, the destruction..."

Recalling the bigger picture, I started, "We went on to -- I mean, we answered that --"

"Yes," she cut me off. She nodded, "Yes, history has its record of how we answered that. But for my grandfather, at that age, there was no nuance, nothing that was ever going to make it right or okay. He was a product of his time. Not because he asked to be, just because that is  how it played out."

"That doesn't make his reaction back then okay..."

"Not at all," she agreed, "but it did make it ..." She sighed, "It did make it at least a place to start to try to understand the character dichotomy I had witnessed. It gave us a moment to begin the conversation from."

I was nodding, asking, "So then did you and your grandfather manage to repair your relationship?"

"We were able to work on it," she responded. "Of course I could never condone his views on the Japanese, but we got to the point where we could discuss why it was how it was for him. 

"Ultimately, I had to accept the jarring duality. He had spent the vast majority of his life teaching and trying to do the right things. In many ways well ahead of his peers who took longer to let go of much broader prejudices." She paused again before continuing, "And yet, also, he was egregiously and unforgivably misguided in his views of anyone of Japanese descent."

Taking a deep breath, she said, "We all have views others are likely to find offensive for one reason or another. We also all have things we can learn by entertaining different perspectives, even if we still do not arrive at the same conclusion.

"It matters that we talk about why we are who we are. It matters that we acknowledge differences or mistakes in one area do not negate common ground or good in other areas. It matters that we keep showing up for each other. Even, perhaps especially, for the difficult discussions, the difficult discoveries."