Hand Against the Father

This is the particular tragedy of sons against fathers. The father does not see it coming. The father still thinks of the son as his child, as someone he made, as someone who carries his hopes. The father may have failed the son in a hundred ways. The father may have been imperious, neglectful, demanding, disappointed. But the father did not expect the blade. The father was still, in some part of himself, waiting for the reconciliation, for the return of the prodigal, for the moment when the son would finally understand.

In the wake of the death of Rob Reiner and his wife by their son Nick, the knowledge before the act emerges as the cruelest part. The children saw what Nick was capable of. They felt the danger in their own bodies. And yet there was likely no mechanism available to them that could have stopped it. You cannot institutionalize someone for being frightening. You cannot compel treatment for an adult who refuses it. The law protects autonomy right up until the moment autonomy becomes lethal.

So the children carry a specific kind of burden: not the guilt of ignorance but the guilt of accurate perception. They knew. They were right. And being right saved no one.

That's a different weight than sudden, inexplicable loss. There's no refuge in "we never could have seen this coming." They saw it coming. They lived in the seeing for years, probably. And now they have to construct a life around the fact that their fear was prophecy, that their brother was exactly what they knew him to be, and that knowing changed nothing.

Rob and his wife now lie in their graves, silent. The dead make no accusations. But they don't have to. The children will accuse themselves, asking forever whether there was some door they didn't try, some call they didn't make, some version of events where they acted differently and their parents lived. There almost certainly wasn't. But the mind doesn't accept that. It keeps searching for the moment where the story could have turned.