Sad Thoughts

Every time I hear the music from St. Elmo's Fire (like my iTunes just made it pop up), it reminds me of my grandfather and makes me tear up. One of my uncles, who was a TV producer and actually died a few years ago of cancer, made a wonderful video of my grandfather's 80th birthday celebration. It has all these interviews with my uncles and aunts talking about their childhood, and my grandmother, who has also passed away now, talking about how she met my pépé and fell in love with him. There was a montage of the family in it to the music of St. Elmo's Fire. This took place almost 20 years ago, and it still makes me tear up every time I hear that song. My grandfather passed away in 1989, and I still remember coming home and seeing my dad cry. It was the first time I had ever seen my dad cry. I remember he was watching that tape either before or after the funeral, and I remember thinking in my kid's head he was torturing himself. But now, I think I understand why he had the need to rewatch it even if it made him sad. I think I need to get this tape from my dad and convert it to digital so I can make sure to preserve it.

All this sad stuff makes me think of even sadder things. I happened to see her interview with the author and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel on Wednesday. He spent teenage years at Auschwitz, and they showed a trip he and Oprah made there. He was explaining what happened at the camp. The scale of that place was just horrifying. They said it was half the size of Manhattan. A place where you use slave workers and kill millions of people was that huge. It gave me chills. I had a big ball in my stomach watching the whole thing.

On Thursday, she had these high-school kids who wrote in essays pertaining to "Night", Elie Wiesel's book about the Holocaust. The stories some of these kids told were so moving. In particular, there were these two girls who went through the Rwandian genocide. Their stories were so touching. Then, Oprah actually reunited one of the girls with her parents she had not seen since 1994. My eyes were full of tears. It was very powerful. I rarely ever watch Oprah, but I'm glad I caught that.