Here we have a heroic figure, Oscar Pistorius, born with no tibias and triumphant as an athlete nonetheless, with his life in ruin -- a self-inflicted debacle taking an innocent with him: Reeva Steenkamp.
As for me, I have no use for Pistorius. All my sympathy goes to the surviving Steenkamp family. Reeva Steenkamp reportedly fled to the bathroom of Pistorius's Johannesburg home, but doors do not stop bullets. Doors, in the end, did not stop the rage.
And that's the only thing I remain curious about. How did it come to be that Oscar Pistorius could be so acclaimed, and yet so unhappy, or unstable, or whatever it is that he was the moment he made the final choice for Reeva Steenkamp?
Pistorius may be sorry -- as sorry as he'll ever be for anything. But Reeva Steenkamp will never be anything at all, ever again. She's dead.
Were there mood altering medications involved? Anti-depressants? I'd like to know. That is the only thing that I worry at, because there are a lot of people on anti-depressants. A lot.
As to Pistorius: Goodbye to you. Goodbye to what you were. Goodbye to what you meant to millions. Goodbye to whatever it is that makes you what you now will be forever known as: a murderer.
You did not write Reeva Steenkamp's epitaph. You wrote your own.
Comments
Pistorious has issued a Statement of his own devising admitting that, at the very least, he fired into a door believing someone was behind it and not knowing who. There is a post about that.
He intimated as much according to reports. To have done so is, at least, pure negligence that I condemn. Whether it be "murder" or not in the eyes of the Law in his jurisdiction, I am not competent to say.
But that level of negligence is murder in my mind. Obviously, you disagree.