Thanksgiving is coming

 It's only a few  days away....

Mimi, Tim and Eleanor are coming Wednesday and Josh early Thursday.

John usually comes but he's in a medical center with a broken back.

It will be good to be with them and to eat too much.

Today

 Hard to imagine I worked in Higganum for several years.

I couldn't find my way there and came home for Bern to give me directions.

Even those weren't great--so, I was a couple of minutes late for the service.

The alb didn't fit at all--much to big.

I was a  nightmare.

But I got through it well

Lots of folk there I knew but had forgotten their names.

Faces, I am good at--not names.

Talked to Mejol, my favorite cousin a couple of hours ago. She's 5 years older than me--and she said the same: Faces not Names.

Getting old is  not fun....

"Two funerals in 4 days"

 I have a funeral tomorrow of an old friend and one on Tuesday of someone I've never met.

I will begin both with this from a classmate in college that she wrote for a man she loved who died in Vietnam. 

    When people die

        It's like a bird flying into a window on the coldest morning

            of the year.

    When people die

        It's like the bears are out of the zoo and

            eating children on the street.

    When people die

            It's like a maniac is in the power station and the

                lights go on and off and on

                off and on and

                off.

    When people die.

            

        I think you'll agree.....

For my children and grandchildren...

Bern and I have two children--Mimi and Josh--and four grandchildren--Emma, Tegan and Chris Bradley and Eleanor McCarthy.

I worry more about them than Bern and I. We are in our 70's and not long for this world. But they have decades to  live.

What the new government will mean to them is beyond my expectations.

I long for them to live in the nation I've always lived it.

But I don't know if that will happen.

I pray so....

 

How I hurt

My right thumb and shoulder hurt from time to time.

The heels of my feet sometime brother me at night.

My knees aren't what they used to be and hurt a bit.

But what hurts is my heart....

My oldest friend is going into a nursing home in Hamden.

I worry about my children and grandchildren.

I hurt about our country and what the next four years will bring.

And I'm 77 and worry about how much time I  have left....

Hurt can point us to what matters.

Really.

Try it....

 

Looking ahead

Time will pass--it always does.

What do we need to do and 'be' looking ahead?

We must live in hope and 'do' what hope requires. That means keeping working for the poor, the disabled, the immigrants....

Here's what pisses me off about the whole deal about people entering the country to find a better life--if you aren't a native American--your family entered this country from somewhere else to find a better life.

Bern's family came from Italy and Hungery and mine came from Britian and probably Sweden.

We came here from somewhere else.

And the President-elect wants to send back people who came for the same reason--to find a better life.

Send us all home--though for me it would be generations, but for Bern it would be one generation on her mother's side and she would be the first generation born here on her father's side.

Send us 'home'....But this is 'home' and can be for many others.

That makes me crazy--the deportation Trump plans!

But I'm not as 'crazy' as he is for proposing it......

  

Broken hearts

 It's been 9 days since the election.

Donald Trump won. I don't get it--which means I'm on t he outside looking in.

I'm still in shock.

Four years  of Trump--who wants Matt Gatz to be Attorney General?

I long to breathe well.

And I can't. 

Not yet.

We shall see.

We shall see what we must do.

I hope.