How can I be with you gone
Eight years now how can I be
You gave me heartbeat and breath
And you gave me heart
*
How can I be with you gone
Forever is too long how can I be
You gave me stride and backbone
And you gave me strength
*
How can I be with you gone
Beyond my touch how can I be
You gave me life and reason
And you made me son
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For my mother, born Leona Patricia Clark, who died December 19, 2001
Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders was right this week when he said, “I absolutely know that the insurance companies and the drug companies will be laughing all the way to the bank the day after this is passed.” If the healthcare reform bill (I use the term loosely) passes without a public option and without an earlier Medicare buy-in, the fat cat insurance companies win, and the American people lose.
Senator Joseph Lieberman’s last minute revolt against the bill because it had a Medicare buy-in (something Lieberman himself advocated) makes one wonder if his decision wasn’t his way of wounding the president because Obama had the audacity to beat Senator John McCain, Lieberman’s friend, in the presidential race. Lieberman is so duplicitous and slimy grease equals sandpaper by comparison.
The notion that Congress can’t take another run at this bill is, to use one of my mother’s favorite words, balderdash. Congress can take up any damn bill it wants. Howard Dean is right when he says this current bill should be tabled or defeated and the White House and others should be ashamed of themselves from taking a run at him.
Not surprisingly the American people are the losers here. The rich win again. And while I like this president, I am disgusted that he chose not to step up to the plate and fight for the public option, the one key element that would have gone a long way in right-sizing the insurance companies’ greed.
Someone should remind the president that a lot of us voted for him because we really believed in him, we really believed he would fight for us and not cave in to those who essentially kill Americans by making it impossible for them to afford healthcare.
The president and others should be on notice, we voted you in and we can vote you out.
These are bloodied skinless words, words pulsing live on the page, hearts beating. The white mug of coffee spinning slowly in cupped hand as eyes pensive watch the page, waiting. The next surge no doubt soon, and then, the cup stills and words jump forth. I read many words and spill many words and sometimes write but a few all the while hoping something emerges that will lean me back in the chair with a smiling sigh and sense, even momentarily, completion. Momentary only, because there are more words. Always more words.
The tears come from somewhere deep when the church choir begins singing The First Noel.
When I sat down in the church pew some 20 minutes earlier for a Christmas holiday show on the history of Christmas Carols I was suddenly afraid, but didn’t know why. I am in the Trinity United Methodist Church in Albany, New York. It is a beautiful church and Pastor Jeff Matthews is a friend of mine and I am surrounded by people I care about but I’ve been scared since I sat down and I don’t know why – until now that is.
I am in a emotionally and spiritually full quiet place as the tears drift down my cheeks and the choir sings so beautifully I am sure they are angels and I am understanding, now, finally, after many years, why the fear and why the tears. At 56 I have, except for when my daughter was little, avoided Christmas celebrations for 41 years. I’d always thought I’d avoided these events because the last Christmas that was Christmas for me was in 1968, the last Christmas my father was alive and the last Christmas I had with my family, and I was right. My father died in August of 1969 and my mother had me placed in reform school on a PINS (Person in need of supervision) Petition in mid-December 1969.
Now, in this pew, Christmas carols being sung, I can feel my father and family close to me, my grandparents: Mommom and Poppop and Grandma and Grandpa and the smell of the Christmas tree along with the entirely perplexing childhood mystery of how on earth Santa gets into the house and eats those cookies and drinks the milk without me seeing him. And now I realize that I am not and never have been alone on Christmas, even when I spent some of them living in an abandoned building. My family is still with me and they are with me right now in this beautiful Albany church and this realization is perhaps the greatest Christmas gift of my adult life.
Anyway, Merry Christmas.
It is when I am on the page that I am in accurate proportion to the world around me. Here, I am right sized to the landscape of life. Here, unlike the roads, journeys and arenas of daily life, I can, but am not obliged to take prisoners. While I am accountable for my choices and actions in life, so are all others, including those few in these past 20 months or so who have have loudly proclaimed their love and friendship for me when, in truth, there was not a morsel of either to be found in their proclamations.
Today I am no mood to offer any slack to those whose so-called good deeds on my behalf were rooted in the selfish, prodding, vicious nastiness inherent in passive aggressive behavior. I will give a few people time to own their behavior and, here’s a novel notion, apologize, and do so sincerely. I am not interested in some jump change bogus apology that is born of passive aggressive bullshit. Only with sincerity will the possibility of healing be known.
While I won’t cut anyone slack who doesn’t own their behavior, I will cut them loose.
Peter S. Kahrmann - Est. 1953 