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Last Wednesday, a letter to the editor appeared in the Express that was so poignant it made me abandon what I had intended to write. Exactly 25 years ago today, Daniel Bertie’s father, Trevor, was shot and killed by bandits in St Clair.
“I remember everything. I remember his last words. I remember the desperate screams of my family as we cried for help. I remember standing there, frozen in horror, as my father lay on the ground.
(via DepositPhotos.)
“In his final moments, he reached out, placed his hand on my foot, and held onto my ankle. That last touch—that was how my father said goodbye to me.”
Daniel was only six at the time. No one has been arrested, and he wrote of the heartache, frustration and the feeling that there has been no closure.
“Every murder in T&T pulls at my heartstrings because I know there is another family now suffering the same grief we have carried for decades. I know the feeling of loss, of helplessness, of screaming into the void for answers that never come,” he wrote. “Some wounds never heal.”
From the time he was six, Daniel (and his family) has had to live with this traumatic experience. At 31, he is still a young man, but his short life has been shadowed by this horror.
For him to write this tribute in a public space must have been painful, but perhaps it will be cathartic. I hope it is.
For years, I have visited and revisited the impact of trauma because I believe it is a significant aspect of the way human society functions (or not) in our time. It seems to be largely ignored as we canter along making assessments about why we have descended into a state of barbarity.
I was going to say bordering on barbarity, but I think we, as a species generally, have entered a macabre cave and I cannot imagine how we will emerge from it.
I get the feeling that many people associate the idea of trauma with violence, and I suppose it is in a sense, something that violently affects one, mentally and physically. But it can be a series of seemingly little things, adding up and coalescing into something massive and hurtful.
Definitions of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) identify events and experiences that affect one’s spiritual, mental, physical and social well-being.
People may react by having intense reactions to what may appear to be innocuous situations. It might take physical forms, such as anxiety attacks, nausea, headaches, stomach ailments, skin rashes, and other stress-related ailments. Without understanding or sympathy, their very real distress is often dismissed with admonishments to pull themselves together.
I’d written recently about how blocking out painful memories is a way of coping, and how, often one is not even aware that one has suppressed them. I’ve seen the explosions that can suddenly emerge. They are conflagrations—frequently violent, terrifyingly unexpected and sometimes self-destructive.
A young man I know, of a quiet disposition, had endured a lifetime of his mother’s verbal and physical abuse without any angry response. One night, driving along the highway, with her haranguing him, he pulled to the side and got out of the car and ran into the middle of the road, screaming that he couldn’t take it anymore. He was almost run over.
All these sad stories of suicides, children and adults, have their roots in abuse. More often than not, emanating from within the family structure. People give up when they feel there is no escape.
Given our past, our history of abuses, and the cultural amnesia that has evolved as a coping mechanism, it is not unrealistic to surmise that a significant number of people have been traumatised and their lives are defined by how they try to cope.
It’s not just the people who have let loose and have manifestly displayed their trauma. If we were to try to imagine the interior worlds, the childhood, experiences, the various forms of abuse that affect current behaviours, we might not be so quick to pass judgements.
I do not think it is unrelated that the emergence of social media platforms that give uninhibited access to voices has enabled a form of coping for many. In this case, it is an avenue for venting, for projecting their demons into cyberspace, and perhaps it provides some relief.
Some years ago, as I made a point that politicians come from roughly the same milieu as the rest of the society and therefore are as likely to suffer from the same kinds of malaise as everyone else. I expanded it to include violent criminals.
Amongst the disbelievers were those who suggested that I wouldn’t take that sympathetic view if I had been robbed, or raped, or attacked. It was seen to be a position I took from a comfortable middle class, cloistered background. It was not, but that’s not my point.
I am coming around to say that trauma is very real, extremely prevalent, and often misunderstood and dismissed.
Daniel has spent 25 years living with its impact, and the pain is still loud and present. He took a bold step to write about it, and I hope that at the very least, by paying tribute to the father he so obviously admired, he has found some measure of solace. Perhaps it might be a form of healing.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
