Me and my friend were walking

My Father in law is in hospice, and at first things were looking like he would recover, and go home. He is 91 as of last week.
It really is a lovely place with an extremely calming feeling all around, distinctly  different from a hospital or medical facility.
As of this evening, he has taken a turn for the worse.   And, I have to figure out how to talk to my family, his son, and grandsons, and help them through this.
Earlier today, I also was thinking about how over my life time, three of my best friends have died.  Not recently, the last was in the late 90’s, and the other two near the end of college.   I tend to think that’s a pretty big number of friends to have lost. 
Is there an average, I doubt it.  Those, were tragic deaths, the expectation of this bereavement has a more tenable feel.
Ted left home at 14, was in the  Merchant Marine during World War II, and a foundry worker, he moved his family from Wexford Ireland, to work for Ford Motor for over 30 years.  He has lived a long and full life, married for almost seventy years, six children, twenty three grandchildren, and eleven great grand children, and still, the loss, even with all that justification and acceptance, is vast.

For all I know

“Do you have the movie, the Lost Son of Penelope?”

“Let me check for you.”
“I’m not seeing it in the system, are you pretty sure about that title?”

“Yes, I’m positive!”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s the story of a women who loses her son, and then goes to America to find him.”

“Could you possibly be talking about Philomena?”

“No.”

We walk over to the movies, I show her the box.

“Yes, that’s it.

“Okay.”

Everyday.

To the good ol’ days

During the Vietnam war, On the evening news, the reporters, who were either reporting from, or about the combat zones, would show the graphic images that were the war zone.
In Iraq, and before that Kuwait, the Bush administration, were savvy enough to have learned that what had ended the war in Vietnam, was it being brought straight into America’s living rooms.
So, there were few reports from the front, and few pictures of the savagery, destruction, or bodies, which might sway the public’s opinion.
What I  suggest is a bitter pill.  With the recent mass slaughter of students, and citizens here, is to show the pictures of the bodies, and the mayhem.  Not the people hugging each other, or the flower tributes.
Nothing will ever be as effective as the visual experience.  Let’s see if that changes the mindset of the public, who passively sit with the idea of  people being brought together by tragedy.