Goodbye Mom

I'm sitting in one of the many waiting rooms/lobbies of Morton Plant hospital in Clearwater, Florida. My mom, whose 92nd birthday was celebrated by some of her children yesterday. we celebrated it for her since she has been in and out of a coma for a couple of days now. Mom is dying. Her breath is short right now. Her eyes are open just a little but sees nothing. She is pale and the setting sun through the hospital window draws deeper lines on her face.

She lived a long fruitful life, brought four children into this world, finally getting it right with me, her youngest. She had a blissful, too short first marriage to a tall blond man with an impossibly big smile. Bob's smile was wiped from his face when his B-24 was shot down over Austria during another lifetime. She then went on to a tortured, long marriage to a clinically depressed man who hated himself almost as much as he hated those who wanted to love him. That guy was Art, my father.

My mom was a giver, a provider and taught us to carry into our worlds the best parts of herself. I have spoken to one of my brothers at length about growing up in our house, how we are proud to emulate the best my mother could teach us and how we both took very different roads in our lives trying not to repeat our father's tragic mistakes. Jack chose to raise a family who would never question that their parents would love them. I chose not to raise a family at all. Cynical? Yeah, but it left me ways to offer love and support to family in different ways.

The sun fades across her face as her life fades away from her

Hope you like it Blue Gal.

Keep the Bush tax cuts!

Allow the Bush tax cuts to stand, but only with an amendment. America's richest only get the benefit of tax breaks commensurate with the jobs they actually create with those tax breaks. Senators McConnell and Boehner always bray about regressive taxes killing investments in job creation and the economy but no one has ever demanded that these windfalls actually be used for economic improvements. President Obama never demanded that bailout monies be used for job creation and economic development. Instead the Republican AND Democratic parties turn a blind eye to tax gifts and bailouts being used as executive bonuses and corporate acquisitions. The fix has always been in from the beginning. Congress has handed out free money to the corporations and the richest of Americans because the Senators and Reps are a part of that "earning over $250K a year crowd". If you hand a five year old a couple of bucks without telling him it has to go in the collection plate at church, don't act all surprised and "no one could have predicted" when he spends the money on candy for himself. Oh, and the tax break comes AFTER a steady, sustaining job has been created.

Listen to the pain in their voices and then tell me that we do not need the ability to hold corporations responsible for their decisions and policies that allow people to die all in the name of shareholder earnings.

Goodbye Dave

If you read this blog over the past year you probably might recall that I was a stem cell donor last February to a man with leukemia. I called him Dave. I did not know his real name owing to the privacy agreements we all had to sign on to, but I had to call him something. I had to because even though I did not know anything of his life, his family, what he believed in or disbelieved... I was invested in this stranger's well being. I found myself to be the unknown cheerleader wishing him strength and recovery from that disease.

I learned a little more than a week ago that my anonymous friend lost his battle. At first I was just stunned to hear that he was gone and then I began to think of who else was affected by his passing. I don't know if he had a wife and children. I imagined who might have been there to mourn his loss and hopefully celebrate the life he led. I wished that I could have stood quietly there in the background as his family bid him farewell.

I hoped that someday I could have met him, to take a private walk with him on a summer evening and thank him for allowing me to do the best thing I have ever done, to get to know this man who I called Dave. Rest well Dave. You will be remembered.