Wrestling With The Better Angels of My Nature

TheTwilight Zone is what I intended to post today. But as I wait to hear of the inevitable... maybe... although more likely... there is no pure joy in it.

There would be the satisfaction that I have lived to see the day my two sets of grandparents, those who lost everything and the one who stayed behind to correct the hideous mistake he had made by running guns for the revolution; my uncle, bumped from the last flight by Alicia Alonso, plucked from Anguilla Cay in flagrant violation of international law, and imprisoned for wanting to be reunited with his family; and my father, forced to leave the island for telling anyone who would listen Fidel was a communist long before Castro came clean, did not ... nor did Olga, Andres, Nena, Jacobo, Ventura, Delfin, even Celia. I can hear my father now. He would have gotten a kick out of saying "Ese desgraciado de verdad esta moliendo vidrio con el culo."

Yet, it is not a happy occasion. My mother who belongs to an earlier time feels it's bad form to celebrate anyone's death. It's probably bad karma, too. Neither carries much weight with me.
But, shockingly, I wonder what it's like? If you really relive your life in those last moments, does the denial still hold, or is there no equivocating with the truth at the last? And if not, imagine it. How do you come to terms with not only having wasted the precious gift of your own life, but having used it to cause untold misery to your fellow man? I don't think I can revel in that, even in Fidel's case.

Although I will shed no tears for the murderous, egomaniacal buffoon, I will not feel the euphoria I felt last year, when I thought his death might end the long Cuban nightmare. Now, I fear that those on the island will be forced to accept one dictator in place of the other. Even the attainment of freedom, although infinitely preferable, would not be without its hazards: how do they relearn representative government, dismantle the failed economic apparatus of near fifty years? I have no desire to see Cuba turn into the former Soviet Union. The Cuban people have proven they are survivors, a people of great spirit and enterprise. In the end, I believe they will triumph. I worry for their immediate future.

I might not make the long anticipated pilgrimage to Miami when his death is announced. No, my celebration will be more subdued. I might partake in a bit of the bubbly, but in a suitably solemn manner, of course.