Pen-Elayne on the Web

"Let Me See Some Tenderness Connected with a Death"

I shall not mourn someone who I will always believe should never have gone into politics; someone whose election to the Presidency amid questionable practices signalled, for me (as for others), one of the two major markers (along with this one) of the downfall of this country from the late '70s promise of what might have been to the reality of the rich getting richer and the rest of us getting poorer and the whole thing headed for hell in a handbasket; and especially, someone whose family has finally been released from their suffering through his final Alzheimer's stages.

But on this day I do extend my sympathies to people grieving their personal losses, such as Kath David who tenderly remembers an old mentor on the anniversary of his passing, and to those who lost (not "gave") their lives upholding values they believed in, values in which many of us still believe despite attempts to pervert them and assign them meanings they never had in the first place. And I'm grateful for a medium that not only allows us to grieve collectively in a way we never could before, but has the potential to set the historical record straight for anyone who cares to learn it from the comfort of their own home - despite continued attempts to distort it and misremember it from the people idolizing the man who presided over the Beginning of the End.