BOSTON - Another day of trying to recover.
Once again, Carlos Arredondo, whose reaction to the death of his son became one of the iconic images of the Iraq war, is reading the last e-mail he received from him. "I'm in najaf," the e-mail from Marine Lance Cpl. Alexander Scott Arredondo begins, and those three words are enough to make a 44-year-old father once again feel as though he is on fire.
Every bit of Arredondo's skin is coated with antibiotic cream. His left palm has glass in it from when three Marines informed him that Alex was dead and he began smashing the windows of their van. His lower legs, which received the worst of the burns from when he splashed gasoline in the van and ignited it, are stained the color of cranberries. His hair, cut off in the hospital, is only now starting to grow back. His fingernails, ruined when he used his hands to claw holes in Alex's grave for flowers, are all gone.
"do me a favor and check the news online. save pictures articles and videos if you can. i'll stay in contact until i move. let everyone know i love them," the e-mail from Alex goes on, and Arredondo continues to read it, oblivious to everything else, including his wife, Melida, who is in another room urgently typing a letter.
"Our family is in need," she writes on her computer.
"Medical costs are now over $50,000."
"We are inviting you to a very special" event, she continues, a fundraiser, and keeps writing until the phone rings and Arredondo comes in to see who's calling.
Maybe it's the psychologist. Maybe it's the grief counselor. Maybe it's the marriage counselor. Maybe it's his mother, who had a breakdown after pulling off his burning socks when he was on fire. Maybe it's Victoria, his first wife and Alex's mother, who called him a bastard when she heard what he had done. Maybe it's his son Brian, who is so confused by what Arredondo did that he has stopped all contact with his father.
<snip>
"I am not afraid of dying," it says. "I am more afraid of what will happen to all the ones that I love if something happens to me."
"Oh, Alex. Oh, my goodness," Arredondo says as he picks that one up to read.
Defying explanation
Even now, so many months later, no longer unconscious in a hospital burn unit, no longer restrained to his hospital bed as a precaution against suicide, no longer gasping as his skin is pulled off with tweezers, no longer encased in bandages, forgiven by the Marines, Arredondo says he does not know why he did what he did.
Was he trying to kill himself? Maybe, he says. Was he trying to bring attention to his son's death, the 968th of the war? Maybe it was that. Was it an act of protest against a war he doesn't like? Maybe. Was it out of anguish, or perhaps guilt, over being a less-than-perfect father? Maybe. Was it, as Melida says one afternoon when Arredondo has gone to Alex's grave, "poor impulse control"? Maybe it was that, too, he says when he returns, hands dirty, eyes shiny, retreating again to the room of portraits and e-mails.
He says he understands the meaning of grief now; less clear to him is the meaning of recovery.
"How am I going to feel better?" he says. "I have no idea."
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