This story fills me with sadness.
It's meant, of course, to be amusing to its audience, as evidenced by its posting in CNN's "Offbeat News" section. And you have to admire the subject's plucky, go for it attitude, despite how badly it's misplaced. But what I really take away from this story is an appreciation of what sharing a loving life should be.
Mr. Rountree attributes his change in behavior to the death of his wife. The impression given is that robbing banks was a way for him to lend significance to his life, to *feel* alive again, in the wake of that loss. I can't feel anything but sorrow, that someone's life could be so completely reduced to nothingness. But it's not a sympathetic sorrow, because to be utterly devalued by the loss of a partner is to dishonor that partner's memory.
Mr. Rountree obviously loved his wife a great deal. But in allowing himself to go "kind of crazy" without her daily influence, he makes a powerful statement, that his wife loved a man without any intrinsic worth as a person.
My grandfather predeceased my gran by well over a decade, and it was a devastating loss. She was his sweetheart, from the first moment he had met her, over fifty years before. After she passed, he struggled with depression, and the aches and pains of his years...but he honored her memory for every minute of his life. Her soul was present in his life every day. And, when he passed, just short of his 99th birthday, almost the first thing those of us who loved him said to one another in comfort, was "He's with his sweetheart now."
So, I'm saddened by this article. Not at what "Red" has done, but for what he failed to do...and what he missed out on as a result.
Posted at March 31, 2004 04:53 PM in Social Order , Weird