On the 7th Anniversary of Your Death

Friday, July 31, 2020

I'm really struggling this year. 

The times when I feel I just can't accept the reality of your death are more frequent this year, and right now I literally cannot remember a time when I wasn't grieving for you, and for myself. I want to crawl out of my own skin at the unfairness of it, at the grief that permeates every aspect of my life, at the pain of missing you every minute of every day. I can't stop crying, and this is the first time since the year following your death that I had to take time off work because I couldn't function at a high enough level to fake it through the day. 

The constant ache that represents your passing, along with the current state of the union and the isolation resulting from the COVID pandemic has pushed me into a full-blown depressive episode. I'm not sleeping, I can't concentrate, my aphasia is back. My desire to do anything, no matter how small, is nonexistent. 

I just don't understand. Why? Why couldn't you have come to someone, anyone, who loved you to tell them how bad you felt, how hopeless? Why couldn't you let us help you to find a way out of the darkness? When you weren't sick, I know you knew how much I loved you, how I would have done anything, LITERALLY ANYTHING, to save you, to defend you, including giving up my own life to save yours. Why didn't you tell me? 

I know depression lies, it lies like a motherfucker, and I know it was lying to you. I know you felt you were weak, that you just couldn't cut it as an adult, and I know you felt you were out of options. And I know that none of those things were true. I know that with the appropriate help, you could have gotten better, and lived your life as you were meant to live it, making the world better with your intellect, your passion, your drive. But depression robbed you of that future, robbed the world of your gifts, and robbed me of a daughter for whom I would have stormed the gates of hell armed with nothing more than my love for you and the ferocity that comes with being a mama bear. 

And I am so fucking angry. I'm angry that you were the one who had to struggle with mental illness to the point where your despair overtook you. I'm angry that you died alone and scared in an anonymous hotel room with a bag over your head, without those who loved you to comfort you and reassure you of our love. I'm angry that you didn't come to the end of a long, long life with your own family and friends surrounding you, celebrating a life well-lived, and a legacy anyone would be proud to have. I'm angry that I didn't see your pain, and your hopelessness, and your inability to see the truth about yourself and your own struggle. And I'm angry, so angry, that of all the families in the all world, losing a child to suicide is something that happened to us.

But I'm still not angry at you. I understand in my heart how much pain your were in, how hard you fought to hang on for the sake of those who loved you, how you just couldn't bear living anymore. Every day, my heart breaks for you in your final, hopeless days, knowing now what I didn't see then, and my heart breaks for me, robbed of my chance to save my baby girl from herself in the darkest days of her life. I know these things, and I know that the grief that is losing someone you love to mental illness is an equal opportunity tragedy, that every family and any family is at risk. 

But I still rail at the unfairness of it all. 

It's unfair that you're gone from my life, from the lives of everyone who loved you. It's unfair that you'll never know romantic love, the experience of sharing decades of your life with someone who is on your side, no matter what. It's unfair that you'll never know the love, the joy, the crushing responsibility, the pride that is parenthood. It's unfair that you'll never find your life's work, or have the chance to dedicate your life to a vocation, or experience the pride that comes from being at the top of your field. It's unfair that I'll never meet your partner, your children, your grandchildren. It's unfair that I'll never be whole again, that I will spend the rest of my life being broken by the grief that is the result of your illness. 

I love you. I'll love you every day for the rest of my life, with a grief so crushing that some days it takes my breath away and narrows my world to a tiny dot of pain that burns with the heat of a thousand suns. 

I miss you. I miss you so much sometimes I feel like it's killing me by inches. My baby girl, who I couldn't save, and whose loss I can't accept. 

What the Fuck, America?

Monday, July 27, 2020


Recently I swore off Facebook until after the election is over. Depending on the outcome, and how people react to that outcome, I may stay off there forever.

I have very complicated feelings about politics in America right now for a variety of reasons. Like most Americans, I'm on edge due to the continuing pandemic restrictions (even though I agree with them 100%). This time of year is very tough for me, due to the proximity of the anniversary of my daughter's death. And I've now completely lost my patience with 45, his supporters, and his lickspittle hacks.

Seriously, I just don’t get it. At all. How can people not see where this is going? Are they stupid? Willfully ignorant? So enamored of the criminal in the White House they think he can do no wrong?

The most recent egregious abuse of power is occurring in - surprise, surprise - cities with Democratic leadership. I'm sure everyone by now knows that 45 has deployed his tRumpTroopers to "quell unrest" in these cities, against the wishes of the state and local government. They're using rubber bullets, tear gas (currently illegal in armed conflict with other countries, per the Geneva convention, but apparently okey-dokey against your own citizens), pepper spray, batons, and currently the pièce de résistance, hooding people, kidnapping them off the street, and taking them to an "undisclosed location." Yes, I said "kidnap." These people are taken into custody by federal officers without identification, they're not read their rights under Miranda vs. Arizona, and not charged. What do you call it?

There is a not insignificant portion of Americans who think this turn of events is just dandy, thank you very much. If they don't want to have chemical weapons used against them, then stay off the streets! If they don't want to be beaten, kidnapped, and terrorized, then they should just agree to stop protesting against...the abuse of power by law enforcement. Oh, the irony.

Of course, I strongly suspect their reactions would be very different if it was a Democratic President pulling this stunt against cities with Republican leadership. Like, say...white gun "enthusiasts" conducting an armed protest against a capital building, for example. But the tRumpTroopers are nowhere to be seen when that happens. And that's just dandy, thank you very much!

Here's the thing about these shenanigans. As a liberal, I would be horrified if any president, regardless of political affiliation, engaged in such an abuse of power. Why? Because this is a common move of regimes engaged in the process of fascism. Fascism isn't a belief system or a political opinion. It's a process of normalizing what would have been considered unthinkable. And in order to do this, it uses five strategies to get to the end result:
And then, finally, calling for law and order solutions to self-inflicted problems (tRumpTroopers in liberal cities).

The pattern is clear. So clear. And yet, people continue to believe the far right whackadoo news reports. They'll keep on believing them, until, as the poem by Martin Niemoller says, "Then they came for me."

Four years ago I had a deep and abiding anger over a minority of this country's population electing such a terrible human being. If he wins again, I just don’t know how I’m going to feel about his supporters. There’s just no excuse for not seeing him for who he is at this point, and supporting him means you support a fascist regime for the U.S., as well as a truly horrible person with limited mental capacity and no concern for anything other than his own ego.  

Supporting fascist regimes is not why I chose to don the uniform of this country those many years ago, and it’s getting harder and harder not to take other people’s politics personally. If they think that megalomaniac is the best choice for our country, then what else do they believe?

I believe that American politics are based on compromise. Americans of good conscience can disagree about the role of government in our lives. In fact, the Republic is built on this dynamic, which in the past, has kept us from moving too far in one direction or the other. Sometimes the Republicans win, and sometimes the Democrats win. It's the nature of the beast, the nature of American politics.

However, it's not about politics or policy anymore, and it’s not about Republicans and Democrats. It's about morals and values. Americans of good conscience should not disagree about whether or not it's appropriate for the President's Gestapo to hood and kidnap people off the street and take them to undisclosed locations without due process or mirandizing them. Americans of good conscience should not disagree about whether or not it's appropriate for our head of state to tell 20,000 verifiable lies about public matters in 3.5 years. Americans of good conscience should not disagree about whether or not it's acceptable for our President to abrogate the Constitution whenever he damn well feels like it. Americans should at least have a common dedication to the rule of law and a representative democracy.

But we don't.

Instead we find a large percentage of our country willingly sliding into fascism on the back of a cult of personality, white fragility, victimhood, nationalism, fear and bigotry. And there is no compromise when the choice is our representative democracy on the one hand and a totalitarian, fascist regime on the other.  There is only the side of the patriots, and the side of the fascists.

How has it come to this? What the fuck, America?

________

Also: Here's an interesting read from the UCF's resident Historian, Dr. David. Because punching Nazis is always the right thing to do.