AUGUST 2009

Kinda bored with the page background.
Wish I knew more about designing blog pages.
Making note: find someone who knows more than me.

Sitting here watching a public TV special on the the Kennedy family over the years. It's prompted of course, by the death of Ted Kennedy but it starts with Joseph and Rose and has moved right on up through all of the history....on up to the present. Really well done. So nostalgic. I remember it all....the bomb shelter built in the parking lot of a nearby shopping plaza when things got dicey with the Cubans. I wasn't scared, I was just a little kid. But I remember what the yellow and black "Fallout Shelter" signs looked like and how they popped up everywhere.

I was in a third-grade classroom when Mrs. Herron was called to the office. When she returned to class she told us President Kennedy had died, we all had to go home from school early and we should be very quiet and respectful in the halls. The images on TV were all in black and white and there was nothing but death and funeral coverage on all channels...for days. No wonder those images are seared into the memories of all of us who were old enough to understand.

I didn't care much for history when I was a kid in school. Funny how I soak it up like a sponge now. Must come with age. I remember my younger sister having to write a research paper on the Kennedy assassination when she was in high school. She was borrrrrrrrrrred to tears. When she told me just how bored she was with the subject I was incredulous. Seriously!!!??? Since the day it happened I haven't been able to walk past a magazine article or book on the subject without picking it up and diving in. I was there. I remember. It makes all the difference.

A friend of mine died this week, too. Brain cancer. There is something to be said for dying from a terminal illness that lingers just a bit. There is time. Things that need to be said.......get said. Things that need to be done.........get done. The urgency of the every-day hassles we all wrestle with take a back seat to issues of substance and moments of deep and true meaning. Brad left on a positive note, having said and done what had to be said, what had to be done. He'd be the first to tell you, there were many many things that needed to be said to lots of people.
I'm thankful he had the opportunity to stitch up those ragged tears and go home to heaven knowing the fabric of the family he left behind was seamless and whole.

It's human nature to cling to life. It's a deep, primal instinct. Listen to all the talk on the subject these days. Talk radio. Newspapers. Is the government wanting to tell us when it's time to die? Should we be able to choose? Is there an age when we're too old to receive treatment for an illness?

Tonight I was talking to my sister, wondering out loud if it's wrong to pray that someone would die. After months of deteriorating health, our mom is not doing well. She's a woman of great faith and she's weary. There is peace on her face and she's pretty much checked out. She doesn't know us when we walk in the room. She's ready.

I see it in her eyes.

It's a wonderfully grey evening. A steady rain is falling.