Poem

My Father in a Box

What is left when someone dies?

Memories good and bad,

emotions of loss and sadness,

maybe even anger.

Fear of the future

stuff - possessions rife with memories

surrounding each item

some meaningless,

others important to some.

So when my father expired,

as he did not pass violently or suddenly,

but passed peacefully

inhaling and exhaling his

last breath with calm peace

and the sweet and sour smell of death.

His death was not shocking

nor was the upheaval in the aftermath.

The only shock remained in how little

was left.

A mass of memories

and help given to many others.

Kind words and thoughts

but so little, so few things.

His body went in the casket

and was lowered

into the ground on a cold

winter day while we stood

outside shivering.

And I kept wanting to cover him

with a warm blanket, imagining

him shivering and cold all

while knowing that this was just

his body.

His vibrance and life gone

and all that was left

for me were a few items

placed lovingly in a cardboard box.

Then the box placed neatly

like him, as he was always neat,

in the basement closet

where it will remain,

like his casket in the grave.

This huge presence

who pervaded my life

reduced to a box in the basement.

My father in a box.

Food notes

As my husband knows, I am obsessed with reading labels, particularly when shopping for food. I want to know what I am eating, how it is processed, so I can not buy items laced with salt and high fructose corn syrup, and chemicals I can't even pronounce. One of my personal rules, if I can't pronounce it, I can't eat it.

So, in thinking about food, isn't it odd that although we want to promote buying American with cars or clothes, but almost never with food? We want imported italian tomatoes, pasta, olive oil, swiss chocolate, french fries or toast, but do we really want American cheese - that processed tasteless mess? As American as apple pie?

The reality is that most American food is not good, it is over processed, loaded with salt and sugar, sprayed with chemicals and essentially awful.

Put side by side organic apples or cherries versus commercially process fruits and there is no comparison. But in traveling to europe there is no question that the food tastes better, unprocessed, tastier, easier to digest. So here, I don't even eat certain foods anymore, especially wheat because I can't digest it. Beef because it is so laced with antibiotics and because the cattle is fed other cattle when cows are supposed to be herbivores, our food system is a mess.

We as a culture are so divorced from the sources of our food, we just want it ready to eat and not to think about it too much. It can't last and won't last as our environment collapses around us. I guess Donald Trump will believe in climate change when it is too late.

Yellow Dog

In these days of "blue dog Democrats" people have forgotten the term, yellow dog democrats, but maybe it is time for revival.

My father, who passed away last week, was a true and proud yellow dog. Although he was financially successful, he came from nothing and never turned his back on those who were, like he, trying to achieve the American dream.

Ironically, my father was born in November 1928, the year the term "yellow dog" was born. During that presidential campaign, Al Smith, Governor of NY, ran as the democratic candidate, but was the first Catholic to do so. Senator Tom Heflin of Alabama refused to support the democratic candidate, backing instead, the republican Herbert Hoover - we know how the Hoover presidency worked out. Many in the South disagreed with Heflin's position, which evolved into the popular saying "I'd vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket."

My father was a yellow dog through and through. He despised the Democratic party's lack of organization and cohesion, but at least knew that it truly represented America, not just some narrow slice of America, economically, socially, religiously, ethnically etc .

So now we get to the Blue Dogs and Evan Bayh or we can call him "Bye". My father knew his father Birch Bayh, a yellow dog democrat. My father supported Birch Bayh for president and truly respected him. He also supported Evan, but recognized that these were, perhaps, more politically challenging times.

Thus, when I read on le web yesterday about Evan's plan to quit rather than fight, my immediate thought was wanting to discuss this with my yellow dog father. I knew that although he understood the extreme partisan ship currently in vogue in Washington, leading to governing gridlock, I also knew that my father would be as disappointed as I was that Bayh said "Bye" instead of staying and fighting the good fight. We will not win every skirmish or battle, but the key is to win the war, the war of ideas, of caring for our country and helping our people, rather than dividing and scaring them. Maybe we need to revisit the term Yellow Dog, and what the party was about in 1928, versus where it is now.

Perhaps the parallels will be apropos - the crash in 1929 under Hoover, leading to FDR's election and democratic control of congress for many years - what did the Dems get done? How did they do it? By populism, not protecting the banks and the bankers from their mistakes and fraud.

We need to get beyond the boring, divisive talking heads of CNN and FOX, and find our common ground, and move forward to rescue main street, not wall street. In 1928, yellow dogs were populists. Let's forget about the weak blue dogs and move on. Say bye to Bayh.

In memorium

I don't think I ever got the RIP part of death. Does someone really rest in peace? What happens to your mind, energy, spirit? These are the things I always have wondered about death. Having sat with my father while he peacefully expired, I can't say that I know any more of the answers but I totally understand the concept of resting in peace.

For the last fourteen months, to watch him fight every day to live, to overcome the challenges facing him after a stroke, he was not at peace. Rather, he was tortured, at the loss of his independence, no longer able to drive, or work, or dress himself, use the bathroom by himself, all the little things we all take for granted once we reach the age of 4.

Watching him as the process of death took over, as the hospice care workers tended to him and made sure he did not suffer, it was sad, but in so many ways a relief as he took he last breath and peacefully expired.

Talk to the Hand, Sarah

Watching the video of Sarah Palin, I think that I just don't get it. I don't get the fascination with her. She isn't smart. She isn't knowledgeable about anything. She offers nothing substantive. Just George W. in a skirt. Talking in platitudes about nothing.

Then we get the hand. Does she really think we're all that stupid and vapid? The oldest trick in the book to write on your hand like a child, cheating on a test? And make it that obvious? Obvious that she can't remember basic concepts and also that she knew the questions in advance so she could write the answer on her hand.

So talk to the hand grandma, no thanks, no to you, no to your shallow nothing statements that make no sense. It's even worse when you read a transcript of her statements.

Please Tina Fey, come back and do some more - talking to the hand.

A Sea of Same

Watching the President's State of the Union, I was again struck by the contrasts between the GOP and the DNC, and the GOP was just a sea of same - sameness, same people (white men), same suits (generally grey pinstripes), and same mentality rooted in the same beliefs that no longer hold true for America. The GOP does not represent the diversity of the America, the women, the children, the people of all economic levels, and most importantly religions, race, ethnicity, sexual preference etc.

To look at the sea of same - as they judged this black man who now is president, their resentment was clear. The sea of same who refused to clap, who refused to honor the office of the Presidency because this man occupies it.

In contrast, to look at the Democrats, suits of different colors, hair of all colors, suits of different colors, people of color, women, gays, jews, muslims, and so on. That is what we are in America, that is its beauty and its strength. Not sameness. Individuality and creativity. The more the GOP tries to scare us and make us all the same the more it works against them and America's best interests.

We can't be the sea of same.

The Seven Ages of Man

As a huge Shakespeare fan, I have been thinking lately about the "Seven Ages of Man" monologue in "As You Like It" and how his description of the life's arc is so accurate:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." — Jaques (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

As I visit my father every day in the assisted living facility in which he is currently residing, and I observe its residents, I am reminded of this passage. I observe how aging is so different person to person. For some their bodies go first, while their minds are still functioning. For others, the body keeps going forward, while their mind deteriorates. It is so individual, and so nuanced, and all so frightening to think that this could be me in 30 years or my husband. Who will care for us? What if our children don't or won't? What if we cannot afford the wonderful care my father is able to receive. So much to think about and consider while still living, working, raising teenagers, pay for colleges and graduate school, not saving for retirement, thinking we will never really retire not because we don't want to but because we cannot afford to.

So we can only hope that our "justice" period is long-lived, and that our second childishness period is mercifully short and painless.