“That’s right,” she said. “Weep. Not for him: for us, the old, who don’t know why. What is your Negro’s name?”

But he didn’t answer. He didn’t even raise the handkerchief to his face. He just stood there holding it, like he hadn’t discovered yet that it was in his hand, or perhaps even what it was Mother had put there. “For us, the old,” he said. “You believe. You have had three months to learn again, to find out why; mine happened yesterday. Tell me.”

“I don’t know,” Mother said. “Maybe women are not supposed to know why their sons must die in battle; maybe all they are supposed to do is just to grieve for them. But my son knew why. And my brother went to the war when I was a girl, and our mother didn’t know why either, but he did. And my grandfather was in that old one there too, and I reckon his mother didn’t know why either, but I reckon he did. And my son knew why he had to go to this one, and he knew I knew he did even though I didn’t, just as he knew that this child here and I both knew he would not come back. But he knew why, even if I didn’t, couldn’t, never can. So it must be all right, even if I couldn’t understand it. Because there is nothing in him that I or his father didn’t put there. What is your Negro’s name?”

He called the name then

From “Shall not Perish” by William Faulkner

No one can write a scene like William Faulkner.  He moves the characters in the foreground better than a chess grandmaster a pawns breakthrough: That’s right,” she said. “Weep. Not for him: for us, the old, who don’t know why.”  Faulkner uses a bizarre question to bring the protagonist at the center of the scene back to reality. “What is your Negro’s name?”

We parents don’t understand the death of our children in a war, even if it happens for a just cause.  Yet, our sons and daughters do as we did when were young. Youth is blessed with idealism, but we grow old and lose it. We become cynical and believe our decisions are sounder than our children’s. But they are not.  Our acts are tainted with all the impurities the passage of time stashes away in our brain.