there's an elephant in the room.
... or on this blog.
he doesn't fly. he doesn't have big ears. and his name isn't dumbo or jumbo or peanuts.
while i aim to use this forum as a soapbox to write about the issues of the twenty-something generation, the recent past, albeit highlighted by beautiful and celebratory events, has also been laden with destruction. (mmmmm, j.ladon)
as i sit at my desk, i can't help but think of anything else. i feel compelled to write about it, not because i have anything more insightful to say than anyone else, but because as far as i can see, coping and dealing with death is as much a part of growing up as anything else is.
grad school. sex. marriage. jobs. death. dating. politics. one big happy category. but not necessarily in that order.
so much has been written about the acute loss from hurricane katrina. and the loss of chief justice rehnquist. and the cell phone towers were bumpin' last night as our friends coalesced to pass around the news of a loss experienced by a close friend.
when the news of rehnquist's death became public, the part of the country that likes its civil rights and personal freedoms cringed. at a press conference the next day, the president announced that, since the news of his passing, rehnquist was still dead.
i might not have liked rehnquist's politics, but if he "could forgive anything in a person except being humorless," then maybe he's okay in my book. and while his death may leave the death of civil liberties pending, there have been some gains.
take roberts, the nominee for supreme court chief justice, for example. not only was the harvard law grad nominated weeks ago for one of the nine most prestigious positions in this country, but he also just got a raise -- and he wasn't even hired yet.
talk about being in the right place at the right time. i consider myself at the right place at the right time when i actually catch the bus in the morning.
and he gets a bigger chair than the other eight.
but personal loss is so much more complicated. it hurts. it sucks. but it's part of the human experience; the ability to reach through our own isolation and find strength, comfort, and warmth for and within each other at times of loss is what humanity is all about. somehow, knowing all that never makes it any easier.
but the funny thing about death is that it also brings out life.
when i was in 7th grade, i lost two grandparents (one from each side) and the closest thing i'd ever had to a fairygodmother all within 10 days. when "grandparent's day" was the following week at my school, my homeroom teacher called my mom to tell her not to send me to school that day. that's humanity.
when katrina hit miami prior to annihilating gomorrah, the destruction that my mom described in my suburb overwhelmed me. for whatever reason, memories came flooding back -- pardon the term -- from my experience during hurricane andrew in 1992.
great. now i'm having post traumatic stress disorder and post partum depression (**see correction note on yesterday's blog and reprinted below). i suppose these are the disadvantages of being an abnormal psych major.
anyway, i had dreams for 3 nights in a row about being stuffed in my mom's closet with my sister, brother, dog, hamsters, and 4 cats. (quite the food chain if you think about it; fortunately, no one was eaten. not even my little brother.) my sister and i played dress up with my mom's wardrobe (think neon colors from the 80's) to pass the time. we might have lip-synched too.
i think that during times of loss and death and destruction, it's easier to deal when distracted.
so last night when the "miami-transplanted-to-dc-crew" hit up the marlins/nationals baseball game, we went to donate our extra tickets to the new orleans refugees who had been bussed into dc earlier that day. only to find that they had more tickets than they had refugees.
humanity isn't just about donating money and clothes and tampons.
it's also about baseball.
... and it doesn't get anymore human than that.
**correction 9/8/05: Dr. Rosenbaum (the one who wears stilletos to the hospital) called me to say that it can't be "post partum depression" - which i already knew, but was trying to make a point. she insists that i correct it to the appropriate medical term: "post fun event depression."**
Thursday, September 08, 2005
return to inno-2-cents
Posted by: DBR @ 2:00 PM
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