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Elizabeth has been at a conference in Denver all week. Arriving to our empty home one retrieved voice mail startles. “Call Austin. It’s an emergency.” Numerous possibilities flash. All are bad. None even close to forecasting the scrambled life that soon will be mine.
The answering voice is calm, measured, distant. “There was a terrible car accident this morning. Willam is going to be OK. He’s here at Austin General. But Chuck, Aletha didn’t make it.”
There is no proper way to learn your 2-year-old grandson lives though injured, but your 30-year-old daughter is dead. The soul simply contracts. Disbelief offers temporary, weak shelter. The result is some hollow, automatic, unremembered response offered to the voice from Austin.
In a kind of slow motion my parts separate in protective disconnection. The silence of my house where we sat on the balcony and filled past estrangement with coffee, cigarettes and confession overwhelms. I fill it with Aletha’s suggestion when once I described the music experience I wanted. Annie Lennox, she said. Her lament filled the space: “Hold on. Hold on to yourself. This is gonna hurt like hell.”
Alcohol slowly flowing to the stomach convinces in its journey. This isn’t real. I redial the Austin number. “Did you just call me and tell that Aletha died this morning?”
“Yes, Chuck, I did.”
This is how Aletha physically disappeared from my life. She remains in every other way. In my mind. In my heart. In my soul.
We she left walk with an unhealed wound-testament to our ability to survive a test beyond our capacity. Aletha continues to nourish.
Her gift of unconditional love a harmonious, continuous vibration. It sounds like 1,000 monks chanting a great “ohm.”
The currents within the great ocean of American opinion shift inevitably but the water still runs deep. “Governing” consumes the campaign spotlight once shining on proposal and promise. Perspectives swirl in conflicting patterns around individual issues as policy replaces promise. Our experience of the new and dynamic President is more nuanced. The rapids ahead, though, result from the rocks of Congress. The roar from the churning water deafens.
Summers/Geitner compose the notes of my own cognitive dissonance. They seem odd bedfellows to Obama’s formula for financial reform. Now more compatible notes sound from the President’s choice. They drift out as the real daddies of Congressional Democrats are outed: the banks.
Grant power to the bankruptcy judge to help those facing foreclosure? No. Directly loan money to college students and reduce taxpayer financed, guaranteed bank profits? Probably not. Recover taxes owed by the rich through exposing the secrets of the offshore banks? We’ll need a very long study. Summers/Geitner perhaps are the correct call. They soothe the savage beast of anti-reformers.
Hear, though, the roar of advancing rapids. That is not the sound of cognitive dissonance. It is a scream of anger from an electorate hell bent for change. Stand among them and feel the burn of their heat.
We’ve come to expect the lunatic fringe sometimes going by the name Republican to stand in the way. Now we see the Democrats who join them. Their outlines emerge in the words of Senator Richard Durbin: “The banks own this place.”
American politicians struggle to correctly compute the value of cold hard political contributions against the value of popular will. Money properly employed can alter a lot of will. But this time the roar of the rapids is not just deep holes around big rocks. It’s Niagara Falls.
The vast Democratic majority on Capitol Hill holds great possibility. Promise made real is within their grasp. Change can restore the founding values of America. Awaken or sew sorrow.
Two such conflicting events confirm the pinball machine nature of life. The emotionally opposite causes of my recent absence from writing exist in a universal unity from the force of the family living both.
In the midst of Phoenix sunshine colored by the joy of the pending marriage of my wife’s niece we encounter separation and loss. We hurry to the hospital where Elizabeth’s cousin has been placed on a ventilator. Tato faced the challenge of muscular dystrophy for nearly the full 29 years of his life. It was a journey shared deeply by family.
Chaos rules the waiting room outside intensive care. People appear not out of obligation but compelled by an act of the heart. Laughter of recalled stories and tears of loss mark the boundaries of waiting. Hospital workers drink in the perspective from this rare height of family love.
That Tato’s 29 years extend beyond the expected grants small comfort. He had become a central family figure in those years. Within the love and service of his mother, father, sisters, tios (uncles), tias (aunts), and primos (cousins) he was shaped. The gift in turn shapes the giver.
Rejecting the means to prolong life in reduced form, Tato slips peacefully into death. Family joins in unity with the moment.
Two hours later in changed clothes and mood family surrounds a different expression of life. Beautiful bride takes the hand of a husband with nervous anticipation of promise. Under the witness of family love and service make a new entrance.
Somehow within the mystery of Tato’s death and the birth of marriage there is compatibility. Life takes its new shape. Though still bound by common values, we all are changed.