The youth of today, and for this discussion, this includes anyone who’s never held their favorite music in their hand (album, 8-track, cassette, CD), don’t understand how recorded music was appreciated in the time before the internet and streaming. I grew up in the age of mixtapes which involved recording songs from the radio (remember radio?) with the deft dexterity of a neurosurgeon. And…hit…..Play AND Record at the same moment! Who didn’t feel like Casey Casum when they nailed it?
My musical education is partly due to the Columbia House ten cassettes for a penny club we badgered our parents into joining. Research and hard decisions in my youth involved selecting my three-item allotment from Columbia House and being honest on my MLB All-Star selection ballot (and not voting for every Cincinnati Red nominated). I mention music because one of the few albums we had growing up was Hotel California by the Eagles. To be fair, my parents also had Rubber Soul and Led Zeppelin IV on vinyl and Sgt Pepper on 8-track. My sister was/is an Eagles fanatic (along with a certifiably insane Keith Richards fanboy). I can’t tell you how many times we listened to Hotel California. One of the songs I loved was The Last Resort. Being born and raised in Rhode Island, I was thrilled that music royalty was singing about my home, Rhode Island. And because I knew the immigrant stories of my family and those of most families I knew, the song’s opening verse touched me:
She came from Providence
One in Rhode Island
Where the old world shadows hang
Heavy in the air
The song, written by Glen Frey and Don Henley, describes man’s ugly takeover of nature’s pristine beauty. Specifically, California, and the migration of people searching for a new beginning in a “new” land.
She packed her hopes and dreams
Like a refugee
Just as her father came across the sea
She heard about a place
People were smiling
They spoke about the red man’s way
And how they loved the land
They came from everywhere
To the Great Divide
Seeking a place to stand
Or a place to hide
Word spreads about such places, and the throngs of people descend on it like locusts eating everything in their path.
Down in the crowded bars
Out for a good time
Can’t wait to tell you all
What it’s like up there
They called it paradise
I don’t know why
Somebody laid the mountains low
While the town got high
And this migration, like wildfire, doesn’t stop until it hits the ocean.
Then the chilly winds blew down
Across the desert
Through the canyons of the coast
To the Malibu
Where the pretty people play
Hungry for power
To light their neon way
Give them things to do
Some rich men came and raped the land
Nobody caught ’em
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes
And Jesus people bought ’em
And they called it paradise
The place to be
They watched the hazy sun
Sinking in the sea
And here’s where the story becomes painful. In the age before the internet and before you had lyrics to every song seconds away on your cell phone, we sang what we heard or misheard. The internet is filled with videos of people singing incorrect lyrics. Yes, it’s funny now! But before you could access the lyrics, you heard what you heard and belted it out as best you could. The next two verses always confused me. I should say I felt stupid not understanding what they were referencing. I assumed “La Hina” was a town in California. It wasn’t until years later that I learned Lahaina is a town on the island of Maui in Hawaii.
You can leave it all behind
Sail to Lahaina
Just like the missionaries did
So many years ago
They even brought a neon sign
“Jesus is coming”
Brought the white man’s burden down
Brought the white man’s reign
Before COVID-19 shut down society, and before masks and vaccines began to pull those who cared about their families and neighbors out of the pandemic abyss, my wife and I went on our honeymoon to Hawaii. We stayed in Oahu and Maui. We rented a Jeep Wrangler on Maui and, on our last day, drove across the island to Lahaina. I wanted a picture of a sign with Lahaina on it to send to my sister, an ode to our childhood listening to the Eagles. We walked Front Street, marveled at the city block-sized banyan tree, bought cookies at the Honolulu Cookie Company store, shopped at the Outlets of Maui, and ate dinner as the sun sank into the sea at the Waikiki Brewing Company. As we sat there waiting for dinner to be served, across the street, we saw the most incredible sunset I’ve ever seen.
I grew up in a tourist town, Newport, RI. And as much as I hated the traffic and the crowds of pretty people, I also knew their money was the economy’s lifeblood. When I heard about the wildfires whipping across Hawaii, and first heard Lahaina mentioned, I could only hope the town would be spared. The pandemic was savage to many industries, with tourism among the hardest hit. In addition to the catastrophic human toll the virus exacted, we all know of restaurants and stores that also did not survive. To have a wildfire threaten the fragile economy of Lahaina seemed as cruel as it was unfair. And then I saw the photos.
Nothing of what I remember exists any longer. It’s all gone. As of this writing, eighty people have lost their lives, with more expected as homes reduced to ash are searched. Front Street is a warzone of burned-out cars beside the mangled remains of homes and businesses. The banyan tree was scorched and may not survive. The Honolulu Cookie Company, the Outlets of Maui, and the Waikiki Brewing Company not only burned to the ground, but with the utter devastation and destroyed infrastructure, people do not yet know if their friends and coworkers survived. My heart breaks for everyone there. Hell came to Lahaina this week and took everything.
Climate change is real. Humans as a contributing factor is undeniable. Warnings of tipping points have been ignored. Water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico exceed 100 degrees in some areas. We have had the hottest weather ever recorded, worldwide. And yet, we continue to ignore the issue and marvel at the consequences with willful ignorance and feigned confusion.
The last four verses of the song, without mentioning it, describe climate change and our greedy abdication of responsibility. However, instead of a coastline, when you read these last verses below, consider they are singing about planet Earth.
Who will provide the grand design?
What is yours and what is mine?
‘Cause there is no more new frontier
We have got to make it here
We satisfy our endless needs
And justify our bloody deeds
In the name of destiny
And in the name of God
And you can see them there
On Sunday morning
Stand up and sing about
What it’s like up there
They call it paradise
I don’t know why
You call someplace paradise
Kiss it goodbye
There are no new frontiers. We have got to make it here.
I am a middle-aged white man. And I can recognize some, but not all, of the societal privileges afforded to me for no other reason than I am a white man. I feel it is important to establish that upfront. I have accomplished things in life partly due to my efforts and partly because of my accident of birth. Accident of birth. What else can I call it? In addition to being born a white male, I was also born in the United States. Again, not of my choosing. But here I am, and I accept the failings in my life as my burden, my fault. I take full ownership of my failures but share my victories as being due to my efforts, others’ efforts, white privilege, and the combination of those factors occurring here in the United States.
The paragraph above is enough to exclude me from the Libertarian party, who believe they alone are responsible for the air they breathe, and they’d like you to thank them for making enough for you like it’s Reardon Steel.
With that backdrop established, let me tell you a little about my upbringing. My first best friend was black. We shared the same first name. When he or I moved away, I’m not sure what happened (I was young and cursed with a terrible memory), my next best friend was Jewish. And the thing is, it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. Or I hadn’t learned from society to hate yet. The only thing I now hate is willful ignorance. I learned so much from my friend about Judaism, its holidays, and the amazing food! I was raised Catholic (as was most of the state in which I was raised). I assumed everyone was Catholic. It wasn’t until much later that I learned Catholicism was itself but a branch of Christianity and Christianity a branch of organized religion.
Throughout my life, until I was probably 30 years old, I assumed that the problems of the past were destined to be solved by my generation. Racism being foremost in my mind and the easiest to solve. It was just wrong! That’s easy to fix, I thought. It was, I thought, the low-hanging fruit of justice, and I assumed I no longer lived in a country responsible for strange fruit (listen to the song). I also thought later in life that gun violence in America would be easily fixed after 26 first and second-graders (and educators) were slaughtered at Sandy Hook in Newtown, CT. In both situations, I learned there was a generational fallacy in my thinking. I assumed my and subsequent cohorts, armed with better information, compassion, and the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, would see the obvious path to social justice. How I was wrong! Chronological snobbery? Maybe. I now believe it is a combination of regional biases and willful intransigence that prevents solving society’s problems.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be 94 years old now if he had not been murdered at age 39 in 1968. What he did, what all who fought for civil rights in America in the 1950s and 1960s, and accomplished, cannot be appreciated using today’s time prism. The Overton Window has undoubtedly shifted on civil rights and many other topics. What they accomplished then, at great personal risk and, for some, with their lives, is monumental. However, the Overton Window is not a slider moving in one direction but a pendulum constantly swinging between the warmth of progress and the cold intransigence of those benefiting from the status quo. “Make America Great Again” is the most recent example of this philosophical ossification. “Progress” is seen as a threat to their privilege. Equity and equality are, ironically, seen as unfair. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are seen as nefarious as Affirmative Action. After George Floyd was murdered by the police, DE&I programs blossomed nationwide, and workplaces and communities benefited from new thinking. Unfortunately, today we see the pendulum swinging the other way and DE&I programs being cut in red states all across an even more divided America.
I saw an interview with Martin Sheen recently. He has been arrested for protesting more times than he can count. And it has cost him roles. He said, “If what you believe doesn’t cost you anything, then you’re left to question its value.” He is 83 years old now. And I couldn’t help but appreciate his passion.
I confess to being a West Wing fanatic. I adored that show (especially the first four seasons written by Aaron Sorkin). I think the season finale of the second season (Two Cathedrals) is the best episode of television ever created. That said, and while I remain a devout fan, I also think it ruined politics for me and a generation of those like me. I assumed life was a meritocracy and not the plutocracy and cleptocracy it truly is. I appreciated the sincere debate depicted in the show and assumed that was how politics worked. Today, there is no debate, only sound bites, social media gotcha’s, net zero wins, and tribalism, where a foundation of facts cannot be agreed upon. We can’t even agree on what is a fact!
Martin Sheen lives how Aaron Sorkin writes.
Contrast that with today’s news that 25-year-old NASCAR driver Noah Gragson was suspended indefinitely for liking a disgusting meme laughing about George Floyd’s death. He’s 25 years old. So, no, I no longer believe my generation will solve society’s ills no more than I think my children’s generation (or Noah Gragson’s) will move us forward.
They say the first step in solving a problem is acknowledging there is a problem. We haven’t graduated from that simple first step. There is no low-hanging fruit when those on the other side will embrace any atrocity rather than let you “win.” And for that, society loses.
My generational fallacy has cost me. Not as much as those in the fight every day. It is a cost for which I feel the need to apologize. It has cost me from seeing the issues clearer. Evidence of that is easy to see. Reread this and count the number of times I say a version of “assume.” However, contrary to the familiar American saying, in this case, it has only made an ass out of me. I hope to do better. I dream of our country doing better. And now, not generationally.
“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
With these words, quoted from Aeschylus, Robert Kennedy consoled African American campaign workers (and millions worldwide) in Indianapolis on this night 55 years ago after having announced to the crowd that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated earlier that evening in Memphis.
If you get a chance today, watch the speech he gave. It is shocking in its beauty and honesty. It was reported that the Secret Service told Kennedy they could not guarantee his safety if the crowd became violent. He gave the speech anyway.
He said, “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the ancient Greeks wrote so many years ago, to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. was 39 years old on that day. Imagine a different universe where he lived. What would the United States look like today? Would we have faced the horrific stain of slavery head-on and ensured equality among all our citizens? Would we finally be living in a nation where his (now grown) are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character? Maybe. Probably not. Intransigence and ennui ossify both the disengaged and unaffected. It is worth noting, Robert Kennedy was dead two months later, himself the victim of America’s gun violence.
At 58 years old, after a decade of railing against gun violence, that uniquely American disease, I am still haunted by the following sentiments when tending to my own heart and not the soul of our troubled nation:
Robert Kennedy:
“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
“The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.”
“Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their peers, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Christopher Hitchens:
“Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence.”
“What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can’t be apolitical. It will come and get you. It’s not that you shouldn’t be neutral. It’s that you won’t be able to stay neutral.”
“For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my ‘race,’ unless I was permitted to put ‘human.’ The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put ‘white,’ which is not even a color let alone a ‘race,’ and I sternly declined to put ‘Caucasian,’ which is an exploded term from a discredited ethnology. Surely the essential and unarguable core of King’s campaign was the insistence that pigmentation was a false measure: a false measure of mankind (yes, mankind) and an inheritance from a time of great ignorance and stupidity and cruelty, when one drop of blood could make you ‘black.”
Today, a former president was arrested and indicted on criminal charges in Manhattan. Donald Trump is the antithesis of Robert Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. because while they carried the torch of justice to move society ever closer to a bright future, he chose to pour gasoline on smoldering embers and moved us backward toward our dark past.
At a time when our country is as divided as ever, short of outright conflict, I hope there are more of us whose “purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better” than those who want to see it burn.
A sentence in The Silence of the Lambs has always stuck with me. Playing a cat and mouse game with young Clarice Starling, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, in his burgeoning respect for the young FBI agent, slips in a clue to the identity of “Buffalo Bill” by saying, “We begin by coveting what we see every day.”
In other words, what we know, what we’ve experienced, is our “normal.” Every child knows only one childhood, and while the grass is always greener at your friend’s house (because you don’t see their life behind closed doors), we only know our life as “normal.” We are all “middle class” in that respect. In the simplistic world of childhood, we understood that there were kids who had it better than we did and kids who had it worse. We, regardless of who we were, were in the middle. Normal.
In genuine Monty Python “Four Yorkshiremen” tradition, I now look at children today and lament the ease with which they can communicate (email/cell phones), their easy access to information (the internet), the societal shifts in the Overton window concerning LGBTQ+, race relations, and other socioeconomic changes they now see as “normal.” However, I also cringe that my generation didn’t fix enough of the outstanding issues plaguing the America of my youth (and compounded the incomplete list by adding so many more complicated problems). If the goal of every generation is to leave the world better than we found it, we have failed. We are leaving behind a world that may not be inhabitable because of climate change. “Here, kids! Apply this SPF 1,000,000 suntan lotion before going outside, and don’t forget your space suit when walking to the bus stop.”
And it goes far beyond climate change, as catastrophic as that is. Children today see cheating (from Trump on down) as the way to get ahead. And that’s because there are no consequences for bad behavior—quite the contrary. We reward bad behavior with advancement and success (unless you lose to someone less moral than you). Drive 100 mph? No problem. Police are only on tv and in movies. Cheat on your wife? No problem. It must have been her fault. Lie at work? No problem. Blame someone else. There are no negative consequences for bad behavior, only the promise of advancement over those suckers following the rules. And that’s the flipside. Those who are moral and adhere to societal rules are “sheep” destined to be led to slaughter by those not afraid to wield the knife. So, not only are there no negative consequences for bad behavior, but there are negative consequences for good behavior. Think about that.
And don’t come at me with, “It’s because of the lack of God in the classroom.” Evangelicals are the most hypocritical flock around. Already willing to accept the bible, angels, and demons as real (while ignoring Trump’s egregious mendacities, viciousness, and megalomaniacal march toward dictatorship), their unfailing support for him is genuinely disgusting and devoid of logic. Fiction is real and facts irrelevant—Trump’s army of pretzel-twisted moralists.
The “Lost Generation” was so named because so many born between 1883 and 1900 had their youth and young adulthood stolen by World War I and death, and survivors were disenfranchised wanderers condemned to see their children fight and die in World War II.
Our failure to address the problems we inherited, coupled with our selfishness and abdication of responsibility, have created a new Lost Generation. This is a generation born into the normalcy of school shootings, movie theater shootings, grocery store shootings, church shootings, concert shootings, club shootings, (insert setting here) shootings, open carry, concealed carry, constitutional carry, and societal harikari, racism, hatred, whataboutism, science is bad, education is worse, bullshit.
This Lost Generation will raise future generations further devoid of responsibility, racing toward an uninhabitable planet with no backup available and mass shootings so commonplace journalists will no longer cover them. “Thoughts and prayers” will be reserved for events not “baked into” American freedom and exceptionalism. There will be ever more rule-breaking, selfish predators advancing through the devoured crowd of ethical chumps still inhabiting the remnants of civilized society—shame on us. We, Generation X (1965-1980), failed in our mandate to leave the world better than we found it. And we learned it from the generation before us, the Baby Boomers (1946-1964), who taught us excess, greed, and self-centeredness as a winning formula. It was our “normal,” it was what we coveted. So, too, the generations after us, the Millennials (1981-1996) and Generation Z (1997-2012).
“We begin by coveting what we see every day.” It is our normal. And we are raising a new lost generation on a dying planet. We covet that which we know. And all we know is wrong.
NEW WASHINGTON – Overnight bombing continued in New York City and San Francisco as Day 39 of President Trump’s ongoing purge of “blue” America continued. Following last month’s arrest and detention of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Congressman Adam Schiff, the president shows no sign of pausing the purge or “Red Whitewashing” as he calls it.
Similar to his coronavirus claims that “If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at,” no casualty reports were issued from within any engaged city. Instead, when asked this morning, the president said, “We’re doing very well. One attack helicopter had to make a hard landing following apparent engine trouble, an engine, by the way, that was manufactured in one of the previously, poorly run blue states. Other than that, we can’t manufacture bullets fast enough, despite my authorization of the Red Defense Production Act.”
He further stated, “the stock market is nearing an all-time high, and as of this morning, the LCF (Lives Conversion Factor) is hovering at a number never seen before.” Indeed, at the time of his briefing before OANN and Fox News, each red state death was trading at 6,973 blue state deaths, a high not seen since the opening days of Operation Golden Crimson. Current Pentagon projections estimate that several blue states will, like an overturning iceberg, flip to red within the coming year. If that timeline proves accurate, the president will be poised to win the postponed presidential election with an unprecedented sweep of the revamped Electoral College. This will all but ensure his nomination for a third term even before the New Senate takes up the controversial White House proposal to rename the president’s recognized title from “Mr. President” to “Your High, Golden Wonderfulness.” Another White House proposal remains in limbo, moving the White House to Mar a Lago (New Washington), relocating the Capital to the Russian Embassy, and removing the bald eagle as the national bird in favor of a KFC drumstick.
When asked for comment on the status of the latter proposal, newly appointed Supreme Court Ted Cruz said, “I don’t believe there is any reason… not to allow the proposal to go through. With the other Justices removed… I, as the Supreme Court… whole-heartedly agree with His High, Golden Wonderfulness.”
Similarly, Senate Tsar Lindsey Graham seemed to flip flop on his initial reservations regarding the bald eagle’s removal following a round of presidential golf on Tuesday. Golfing included a KFC luncheon held on the 7th green and a presidential nap on the 13th green. The presidential siesta came complete with My Pillow pillows emblazoned with the new presidential seal (Two crossed drumsticks, one holding a nuclear missile and the other holding a gravy soaked biscuit).
Across town at the Ministry of Truth, Tsar Marco Rubio quoted an unrelated Bible verse when asked about recent, underground science and facts regarding coronavirus death’s topping 1 million. To clarify, he stated, “Jesus wasn’t taught calculus or medicine, and he is the white man we most seek to emulate. Other than His High, Golden Wonderfulness. Amen and pass the mashed potatoes.” Rubio, whose petition to change his last name to Ruby, per Operation Golden Crimson guidelines, saw his case move closer to Supreme Court Cruz (whose own petition to change his name to Oswald is pending presidential approval). When inadvertently pushed to expand on his remarks by Fox News reporter John Roberts (whose disappearance following the news conference was deemed coincidental to his line of questioning, Rubio replied, “Take him, dear Lord, take him.” It was not lost on this reporter that Rubio’s top security man is named Deerloard.
No living Democrats could be located for comment, and no Republicans could locate their vertebral column.
On October 15, 2015, forty-three days after my wife died, I smiled and I cried.
Today, Major League Baseball should be opening its 2020 season. Unfortunately, like life everywhere, it is on hold as the world wobbles off its axis and addresses the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, like now, I am unsure and hesitant, worried about those I love and unsure about the future. Now, like then, I look to baseball to bring structure, excitement, comradery, and normalcy.
Today, MLB.com offered full-length games from its storied past. Without knowing why, I clicked on the American League Division Series Game 5 between the Rangers and Blue Jays. A winner-take-all game, it is better known as the game in which Jose Bautista flipped his bat after homering late in the game.
It started as a great game between pitchers Cole Hamels (Rangers) and Marcus Stroman (Blue Jays). Tied 2-2 going into the seventh inning, Rougned Odor singled for the Rangers and ended up at third after a sacrifice bunt and groundout. After Rangers’ right fielder Shin-Soo Choo took a high pitch, Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin attempted to throw the ball back to pitcher Aaron Sanchez. Unbelievably, the ball hit Shin-Soo Choo’s bat and rolled down the third baseline. Odor took off and easily crossed the plate while the Blue Jays wondered what happened. After a long conversation between the umpires, Odor was granted home plate as the ball was considered “live.” Needless to say, in a tight game, the Toronto fans erupted in protest. Bottles, cans, and trash were thrown onto the field. Play stopped for what seemed forever. After such a close game, I, too, was upset to see a team lose a playoff series in such a meaningless manner. After failing to save my wife from the relentless attack of cancer, my sense of life’s unfairness seemed to distill itself into this moment. I was incensed. What happened next, through baseball, I still can’t properly process.
In the bottom of the seventh inning, through a series of errors that almost made me believe in (at least a baseball) god and righting the wrong from the previous half-inning, Jose Bautista stepped to the plate. With the fans (and me) standing and on a 1-1 count, pitcher Eric Dyson threw a meatball that righted my world. The monster blast that Bautista hit into the upper deck released every pent up emotion I had no way of handling following my wife’s death 43 days earlier.
With my children back at school, finishing their senior year at the University of Texas at Austin, I was living alone at home with my dying dog who would not see Opening Day the following season. My days at work were blue and my lonely nights and weekends utter blackness. Fortunate enough to have cable and splurging on the MLB package, baseball was my roommate, the television conversation.
To have the game I love bring a sense of fairness, where doing the right thing is rewarded in positive results, meant the world to me. To see the Blue Jays (and Bautista) win the game and set straight a correct but unnatural technicality somehow made me weep as if I had beaten cancer for my wife (or was even a Blue Jays fan). I watched that game today and realized how soon after my wife’s death that game took place and how much it meant to me then and why.
That day, baseball showed me a flicker of fairness. That day, Bautista did something I could not. That day, baseball brought me back.
When it is safe, baseball will bring us back again.
And yet, at this point, we have been conditioned by the daily shitstorm of Tweets, rants, insults, and societal oversteps that we simply yawn. Shame on us. Our gag reflex at the absurd and unacceptable has been blunted by repetition and callused by social media. But Viktor Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” That is the freedom we should be seeking, that is the independence we should be searching for and celebrating, not whether our president weirdly hugs a flag or misrepresents a football player for kneeling before a game.
My life is extremely important to me and me alone. My story will appear in no history book, my children my only legacy. I get up, go to work, do my best and I pay my taxes. We are all the result of our circumstances and our decisions based on those circumstances. I have raised children the best I could while making mistakes for which I will forever be ashamed. That said, they are the best thing that has ever happened to me and the best thing I will ever leave this world. I have willingly sacrificed a career to be a caregiver. I have buried my wife and tried to find happiness in a world I hardly understand. In other words, there is absolutely nothing remarkable about me. And I pay my taxes. I am happy to do so. I enjoy driving on paved roads. I complain about potholes. I enjoy living in the United States. I complain about military spending. I enjoy pizza. I complain about being too heavy. I still think I can hit a fastball and I see wrinkles in my neck.
But I am tired of playing by the rules when the rulers do not. I doubt Donald Trump has paid any taxes in the past 20 years. None. And he claims to be worth $10 billion. Jared Kushner paid little or no taxes over an 8-year period. And he’s worth $324 million. How many potholes would that have filled? How many schools would that have built? How many teachers would not have to buy their own supplies with that influx of taxes? Not to mention the $497.80 million Donald’s Daddy bilked us out of over the years by funneling money to his children. How many veterans, that the president claims to adore, could he have been personally treated or outfitted?
Having been raised Roman Catholic, and hard-wired with intrinsic guilt, the old saying, “How can you sleep at night?” always played in my head. That was always the guilt trip for past transgressions. Too late for future improvements. I always liked to play it in advance with the opportunistic, “What would I do in that situation?” This has afforded me the chance to make decisions, not always the correct ones, that I could defend to my children at a future date. “What did you do about gun violence after the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School, dad?” I can answer that.
But kleptocrats answer to neither guilt nor history. To the question, “How can you sleep at night?” Trump answers, “Fine, either in the White House or in one of my gold palaces.” To the question, “What did you do about climate change?” Trump will answer, “Got us out of the Paris Climate Accord, watched the icebergs melt and the polar bears starve to death (before poor Don Jr. and Eric could shoot them to death), watched Florida sink into the Atlantic, and spent my gazillion, tax-free dollars golfing and eating KFC. I’ll be dead before the air is too toxic to breathe and burns you to ashes. Now go pay your taxes, suckers.”
Friends, both near and far, have helped me navigate this past year without Lisa. For that, I will be forever grateful. The current world in which I now find myself is both dystopian and exciting, but mostly just foreign. No amount of research could prepare me for the world in which I now live. The changes I have endured over the past year have been as dramatic as they have been challenging. Moving from Texas back to Rhode Island was the smart thing to do, and I appreciate being near family more than I ever have. To be close to my mother, sister, and brother brings me comfort and peace as much as living in Rhode Island brings me reconciliation, familiarity, and appreciation.
Attempts at a social life have so far resulted in few successes and some crushing defeats. This is one area in my life where, while I am incredibly grateful to have my children at home with me, I know I have few prospects. Having the kids around since their graduation has kept me moving forward with purpose. Getting used to a new home is difficult enough, but to have to do it alone would have been far worse. Starting a new social life is very hard for me. I am not the most outgoing person in the world! But starting to reach beyond my comfort zone is what I now find myself confronted with if I ever want to “have a life.”
Unfortunately, a problem far greater for me beyond getting out of the house is my constant need to get out of my own head. This has always been an issue for me. I tend to overthink everything while pessimism erodes healthy feelings or hopes. Some friends have been kind to me beyond all reason as if they signed a pledge with Lisa to look out for me. Other friends have been standoffish, probably unsure how to address my situation. I cannot blame them for their squeamishness; it is a difficult situation and one with no easy solution. I find myself mourning one friend in particular who ended things with me after telling me we were headed in different directions in life. She was right, but that doesn’t make the wound hurt any less.
I cannot help but think that I am destined to be alone now, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I long to be in a relationship, feel I still have much to offer and need, while on the other hand, I feel guilty for having these thoughts because I will forever miss Lisa. One year has gone by now, and I’m both better than I was following her death and more confused than ever. I don’t know if this is normal, but the “normal” I am now living is very different than the normal under which we have been living for the past eight years. No longer do I see cancer hiding behind every smile, determined to undercut our happiness. No longer do I go to hospitals and doctor’s visits; no longer are we Hospice clients. But too, no longer do I have that epic battle to wage every day on behalf of someone for whom I would gladly have given my own life. I tend to do better when facing a crisis than normal life.
Ultimately, a new life will require me to get out of the house regularly and out of my head even more. Any thoughts on how I can do that would be greatly appreciated!
So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest…” Quint, Jaws
It has been a very difficult year and a half. First, in November of 2014 my father died after a brief but excruciatingly painful fight with lung cancer which had spread to his bones. Almost one year later, last September, my wife died after a long fight with breast cancer which had spread to her lungs. And then only six months later, my dog died after a painful fight with a soft tissue cancer which had spread to his bones. One year, then only six months, part of me wonders what horror will befall us in three months. But I have to believe that the pain and suffering have ended now. I can’t help but appropriate Quint’s quote to, “So, five of us went to Texas, three of us come home, cancer took the rest…”
Cancer has targeted my family for far too long now. I don’t want it to have any more power over us. My children have spent fully one-third of their lives living under the threat of cancer taking their mother and then their dog. Almost their entire teenage years, years difficult enough without cancer moving in to live with us, has been spent living under that dark cloud. They are 21 years old now and, in spite of these added pressures, will both graduate on-time from the University of Texas at Austin, each with over a 3.5 GPA. How they have been able to stay focused amazes me and is a testament to their strength of character.
I know people have had it harder than we have. I don’t claim to have a corner on suffering. And I am grateful for the seven years we were able to steal from cancer by moving to Texas and seeking treatment at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. I’ll never regret that decision. But if we could have a break from any additional pain for a short time, that would be great.
Each of us is dealing with these losses in our own individual manner. Certainly, grief counseling has helped, but we still face a world in which neither Lisa nor Delbow will walk with us any longer. We have had long discussions about faith, heaven, philosophy, and all of the accompanying topics. We disagree as much as we agree but the discussions are always lively and fascinating. I hope that we can each find some comfort in our positions.
Finally, there is the issue of moving forward. The house, already quiet from Lisa’s absence is now even quieter without Delbow’s rambling about. The kids are on spring break this week, so I have a respite before facing that still house alone. I now have six months of experience without Lisa and living alone. I hope this serves me well when the kids return to school. But before we know it, school will be over, graduations will have been concluded and we will be packing up for our trip back to Rhode Island. I hope it goes well and we can begin our new lives healthy. No sharks, no cancer.
Thoughts at Large 