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Old-Fashioned Accountability Still A Virtue

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 8, 2008

In modern times, the Grim Reaper may never have had a busier week. Eight more American soldiers died in Iraq engaging Mahdi thugs - thugs who were sent to their maker in uncounted numbers. In Myanmar, the body count in the wake of a killer cyclone may reach six figures.

In Wesley Chapel, two high school seniors in a 2002 Mitsubishi Eclipse wound up off the road and upside down in a mass of trees. One died at the scene, the other at a nearby hospital. After all, Kristin Gaskin and Tabitha Pastrana were known to do everything together.

But this, this was just too much. Too much togetherness. Too much horror. And much too much death.

They were just weeks from taking the cap-and-gown stroll that signals the metamorphosis from kid to grown-up, a signature coming out that rivals in its ability to astonish and thrill the butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.

Other families still possessed of their graduates-soon-to-be will have that moment to photograph, to videotape, to preserve, like perfect monarch pansies pressed in the idealizing folds of their memories. The families mourning Gaskin and Pastrana will belabor their imaginations; it is the aching fantasy played, despite themselves, by those who survive - loosely defined - the deaths of young children.

In Pursuit Of Civility

Once upon such a nightmare, the mournful would reliably lean on messages of tenderness, whatever else might have been lurking in the darkest interiors of the well-wishers' brains. Something primitive in us would secretly long for explanations at the same time our respect for the dignity of the grieving would hush our mouths.

Of course, we wonder whether Pastrana, behind the wheel, was too heavy on the accelerator. Or whether she was cut off, or following too closely. Of course, we wonder whether she was somehow self-distracted, as so many drivers, especially the young, seem to be these days. Of course, we wonder whether she was under the influence of something: a tuna sub, a strawberry-banana Icee or something more nefarious.

We wonder because we hunger for a useful explanation, a defense against what otherwise seems utterly random, freakish and scary. If there is no underlying cause, what's to prevent any of us from caroming off the highway into a forest?

But, out of civility and respect for the bereaved, we overrule the brain's primal urges.

At least we used to.

A Worrisome Practice

Now we have the Internet and interactivity and, in a boon to authors of half-baked opinions, anonymity. At the same time newspapers maintain the centuries-old practice of attaching genuine, authenticated names to letters published on newsprint, those newspapers' Web sites publish - under pseudonyms, to fuel freewheeling, provocative dialogue - speculation, presumption and unfettered nastiness.

This Space is not whining. It is a big boy, and comments about its opinions are welcome and oftentimes useful. But it shudders when it imagines families devastated by tragedy, scandal or personal disaster reading the IEDs of unaccountable cyberpundits.

OK, it's old-fashioned, but, really: You have something insightful to share about the deaths of two high school best friends forever? Put your John Hancock on it, or leave well enough alone.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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