The Dred Scott Case of 2013: Gay Marriage

Dred Scott

      Dred Scott, acting under the conditions of the Missouri Compromise--stating, in short, that new states shall be free states--undertook to seek his freedom, having been taken by his owner to a free state, and therein kept as a slave.  Under the law, he did not see how he could be kept in an enslaved condition in a state that did not recognize slavery. 

     You see, Stephen Douglas had proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would give all states the power to decide the "slavery question" for themselves, and saw it through passage.  This negated the federal jurisdiction over slavery, and ushered in what we know of as "States Rights."  Abraham Lincoln, debating Douglas ferociously, condemned this act, believing the Founding Fathers, unable to get the Constitution ratified if they pushed for abolition; for, they knew they would lose the support of Georgia and South Carolina, and there would be no new constitution for a nacient democracy, such as ours was in its infancy, to see growth unto and through the ages, did all they could to provide for slavery's eventual end.  Then, Lincoln argued that Douglas had undermined the strategy of the Founding Fathers, and was assuring the growth and maintenance of slavery unto perpetuity.  This was an unbearble position for our country, Lincoln argued, and would not repair divisions that threatened our very being as a country:  Lincoln proclaimed, "A House divided against itself cannot stand..."

We are still a House divided.  Those against full and free equality for gay people relegate the right to marry to states.  States Rights.  Just as with "the question of slavery."  A gay couple, legally married in New York goes to Alabama, let's say.  Are they not still married?  Well, no, actually, as Alabama does not allow gay marriage, the marriage is not legal there, and no rights attendant to married couples shall be applied to that gay couple.  It's Dred Scott and his freedom all over again.  It is the question of, "Who is a rightful citizen of this country?", all over again. And, while marriage has been the domain of states, about 1100 federal laws, including benefits, family leave, next of kin status, a reprieve from estate taxes when a spouse dies, and the extension of Social Security benefits upon death are all part and parcel of those laws.  The 1996 Defense of Marriage  Act (DOMA), signed into law by President Clinton, is very much a federal case, making marriage, gay or otherwise, very much a federal case. Today, our Supreme Court hears arguments that will determine if we have grown up yet, if we can get our House together, and if we will lead the world as the greatest democracy on earth.  We will have to wait and see...

    

     On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court handed down its decision on Dred Scott v. Sanford.  What follows is an excerpt of the Supreme Court decision:

The plaintiff [Dred Scott]... was, with his wife and children, held as slaves by the defendant [Sanford], in the State of Missouri; and he brought this action in the Circuit Court of the United States for [Missouri], to assert the title of himself and his family to freedom.
The declaration is . . . that he and the defendant are citizens of different States; that... he is a citizen of Missouri, and the defendant a citizen of New York.

...


The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen? One of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution....

The words "people of the United States" and "citizens" are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who ... form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives.... The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement [people of African ancestry] compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them. [Italics and underling are mine].

  

            So, here we are, 156 years after the Dred Scott decision was handed down.  It was overturned after the 13^th and 14^th Amendments were ratified  (1865 and 1868, respectively).  The 13^th Amendment abolished slavery.  The 14^th Amendment granted all rights and privileges of citizenship to the once enslaved.  And, today, we are debating whether or not gay people ought to have the full and fair rights and privileges of citizenship in the world’s greatest democracy?  Yes, we are. 

            Let’s face it:  we love to hate.  We seem to need some group or other to hate.  Now, the question is, do we have the guts, the grace to stop hatred and discrimination for this, I want to say last bastion of hatred, but I know we will find others, so, do we?  Do we have the guts to “give” gay people the right to pursue, “…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” that our Declaration of  Independence set forth as the absolute conditions of democratic citizenry?  We can only hope.

  

Because, this guy:

Antonin Scalia

And, this guy:

Clarence Thomas

                                                                                                (ironic, no?)

And, this guy:

Samuel Alito

And, most times, this guy:

…get to decide, according to their various predilections, what will and will not be Constitutional in our republic…Just as Roger Taney’s court of 1857, that got it so right (yeah), in the Dred Scott case.

‘Tis true, what old Ben Franklin told a woman, outside of the hot room where the Constitutional Convention had convened. 

She asked, and I paraphrase, “What kind of government have you bequeathed to us?”

Franklin answered, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

To those of us who believe the full glory of this country has not been reached, but that we can get closer to it, we await the hearing today, and the Roberts’ court decision, with the wish that we can hold onto the hem of this republic, pull it close, embrace it firmly, and KEEP IT, for all generations to come.

And, let us never forget...

Beautiful Boy

Beautiful,
Beautiful, beautiful,
Beautiful Boy,

Before you go to sleep,
Say a little prayer,
Every day in every way,
It's getting better and better,

Beautiful,
Beautiful, beautiful,
Beautiful Boy…

I can hardly wait,
To see you to come of age,
But I guess we'll both
Just have to be patient,
Yes it's a long way to go…

                                                                    Beautiful,
                                                             Beautiful, beautiful,
                                                                 Beautiful Boy…

                                                                                            “Beautiful Boy” – John Lennon

            An Algerian boy, Mahdi, with liquid brown eyes that hold the sadness of what he has seen within them, and the noor—the light of God—shining through them, soft-spoken and gentle, has joined my class.  He was afraid to say why he believes Muslim and Arab countries have problems with Israel and the United States: 

“I am afraid, you know, um, that, uh, they will be, uh, how you say?... mad at me, not like me, so…I not going to say.”

Another student, Edgar, says, “You think we’re gonna be mad at you if you tell us what you been through or think or something?  Man, we’re not like that.  You can say what you want.

“No…I scared and, uh, should not…I should not…”

“We want to hear what you have to say.  It’s ok, man.  We’re cool.  It’s ok.”

“You,” I tell him, “are safe here, respected here, and have the freedom to say anything.  In this country you have the right to speak freely. No one will hate you or hurt you.  Mahdi, you are part of our family.  We can agree or disagree with each other, but you—and everyone here—is loved and appreciated.  And no one will go crazy or say hurtful things to you.  Ask them.  I do not allow ignorance or attacks.  It just doesn’t happen here.  Everyone knows, I protect you.  I protect you and everyone in our class.  You don’t have to speak.  Just know that you can and no harm will come to you.  Do you understand?”

“Yes.  I think I know this.  I…Ok.  I…in Algeria, we see very, very bad things on the news.  And, it hurt us, you know?  And…

Mahdi goes on to tell us about the Israeli blockade of food and medicine from the Palestinian people, the soldiers with guns who provoke the Palestinian people, and a little bit about how Islam is misunderstood, and that terrorists who claim to be Muslim are not Muslim, that Islam is a peaceful religion.

“You know how we say ‘Hi, uh Hello?  Salaam alaikum.’  It mean ‘Peace be with you.’

I tell him “Shalom” means “Peace”.  He smiles and tells me he knows this and is happy.  He tells me he has Jewish friends, and knows, "Not all of everyone...uh anyone bad or the same."

“And, and I want to tell you a story about the Prophet Muhammed.  He have a Jewish neighbor, and the man, he put garbage in front of Prophet Muhammed’s door everyday for many, many days.  Then, one day, Muhammed see no garbage by his door.  A neighbor say the Jewish man who was mean to him was sick.  So, Muhammed, he go see, uh, visit, yeah?  Ok, he visit him. The man say, ‘Why you here?  I put garbage by your door.  We not like each other.  Why you here?  And Muhammed, he say, ‘Because you are sick and I come to help you.’  The man, he say, ‘Why?  I put the garbage by your house.’  And Muhammed say, ‘The garbage is thrown away.  Do not worry about it.  I am here because we are brothers, all God’s children, and I here to help you, to make things better.  I love you.”  And the man, he cry and hug Muhammed and say, ‘I want to be like you.  I want to be a Muslim.’”

We talk about conversion.  We talk about getting along without converting.  We talk about respect for all people, no matter their religion.  Mahdi wants us to know Muhammed and Islam are good, not like some people think.  We talk about ignorance and how it hurts our world.  We talk about forgiveness and how it helps all of us to be better people, is a gift we give ourselves and those we forgive.

Mahdi stays after school.  I know he wants to talk.  He tells me why many in the Arab and Muslim countries have problems with Israel and blame the United States for so much.  He tells me that the news here favors the Israelis and does not show the real horror the Palestinians must live with.  We talk about the media, censorship, staged scenes, and photo-shopped images.  We talk about wrongs on all sides.  He understands.  He even knows some people on both sides do not want peace because it would mean a loss of power to those who “negotiate.” It is an intense conversation.  But he has another story to tell, one that explains why he struggles to forgive Israel, even though he believes that forgiveness is good and right. 

                        “Ms. Reale, can I tell you this I saw that hurt me inside?

I am moved that this beautiful boy wants to talk, to get this out, and that he trusts me. 

“Miss, I was watching the television one day, and I see an Israeli man, and he with a Palestinian woman.  All around her there is Israeli men.  And this man (he clasps his hand around his forearm), this man, he bite her.  He bite her, Miss, like an animal bite.  Then she scream and he throw her up against a wall, and all the other men, they start throwing rocks at her.  They don’t stop.  They hurt her with these rocks and they don’t stop.  And she cry and have no place to go.  This hurt me here (he puts his hand over his heart), and make me to get sick.  That what make us mad over there, in my country.  And we don’t know why the United States, they don’t help her, you know?  Help the Palestinian people more.  They like nobody, like dirt.  But they are human being, you know?  We all God’s children.”

Yes, Beautiful Boy, I know.  And, I know I am blessed to have you in my class, my life.  And I know the world will be a better place with both of us in it, as we try to forgive and love—even when it is so very hard to do so.  That is where grace comes in:  It is easy to love when all is well.  It takes grace to love when life is so very, very difficult.

There is a proverb that says, “When the student is ready, the teacher will come.”   We are all students and teachers.  I am glad I was ready for Mahdi.

           

Torn

There's nothing where he used to lie
The conversation has run dry
That's what's going on
Nothing's fine, I'm torn…


I'm all out of faith
This is how I feel

I'm cold and I am shamed,

Bound and broken on the floor…

Illusion never changed
Into something real

I’m wide awake and I can see

                                                             The perfect sky is torn…

“Torn” – Natalie Imbruglia

            There is nothing more brutal than watching children stand at the foot of their parent’s casket.  So solemn, small, and all alone.  Unable to speak.  Just tears, so many, many tears.  Our brother-in-law died.  He was 51.  He leaves behind four children.  My sister-in-law is a widow at 44 years old. 

            We didn’t see the kids as much as we wanted to because of him, and my sister-in-law as well.  He had a great heart, and was in some ways beautiful, but had no control over his mouth, his unreasonable expectations, his tortured self, and it was a bitter brew.  To have known him almost all my life—we grew up together—and know his astounding work ethic, his intelligence, his humor, his graciousness as a host, his true love of us all, and to know the other side, so dark and damaging and dominant was heart-breaking.  And our love for him was very real, and we were always torn. His childhood wounds—he lost both his parents young—were never worked through, never cleaned and bound.  He ranted and raged and took his pain out on all of us.  So we had this terrible choice to make:  try to be there, overlook the abuse, get sick and stay around, or go.  We left.  For years.  And we were always torn.

            Regret is a motherfucker.  You see the kids, the casket, and, all at once, you want to make things right, make everything all right.  And there is no way.  And you tell the kids you love them.  You tell them you are there for them.  And your nephew says, “But you weren’t around that much.  Why?  Why weren’t you around?”  And you want to die. And you can’t tell him how badly you were torn.

            My therapist told me what they tell everyone, “You cannot control anyone, only yourself.” A basic tenet of psychotherapy; too bad Woody Allen didn’t get this.  So, anyway, you choose self-preservation.  You stay away, in angst and depression, and wonder, at a time like this—when all is said and done—did that self-preservation thing feel better?  Better than you do now?  And that “I gotta put myself first” thing therapists tell us, well, how did that work out for us?  …But you weren’t around that much.  Why?... Where were you?...

            Do I feel any better now, when all has been said and done?  The answer is, I’m torn.  Yes, I feel better for not having to watch the kids being damaged.  Trust me, I was not passive when we were around.  I tried for years to do something about it, but my efforts were futile, and I was ferocious in my frustration and fears for the kids.  No, I do not feel better because I love those kids and hate the years of missing them.  But, I knew we were all limited in what we could do.  I was realistic.  We hung in there for years.  And we left when we started feeling sick inside ourselves just being there or thinking about going there.  And, I’m torn for another guilt-laden reason:  I am feeling relief that he is gone.  I am feeling a way back into the kids’ lives that his mental illness blocked for so long.  And, I’m feeling that maybe—fuck the “maybe;” this is no time for equivocation; the truth is that I believe the kids are better off without him.  I hate that. But, this is how I feel; I’m cold and I am shamed, even though I know our greatest hope for another, for any other, never changes into something real when you are wide awake…And, again I’m torn:  My sister and I lost a parent while still children ourselves, and I know that loss is primal, is, especially when relationships are contentious, forever.  I hate that they will suffer all the insufferable feelings.  I hate that we can’t do anything much about that.  And I hate that I have these awful feelings about him being gone. There is nothing more brutal than watching children stand at the foot of their parent’s casket… I live this truth.  Ann and I were those children. Loss is a motherfucker.  Guilt is a motherfucker.  And, nothing’s fine; I’m torn.

            Buddha said, “Life is difficult.”  What a fucking understatement.  LIFE  is CONFLICT, and just how much you can stand, and how much you can resolve or affect it in any way that makes the living any easier.   Life is a motherfucker.   Nobody survives it.  We search for our purpose.  We hope to make something good of our time here.  We don’t even know, empirically, if there’s a there after here; we pray there is, maybe even believe, and hope it is grand. We grope around, make mistakes, commit our sins, make amends, fall and fail, resound, succeed, witness miracles—even make them, seek to grow, be our best selves (if we are somewhat alright in the head), are funny, crazy, selfish, self-less. We are amazing.  We are all this, do all this without ever truly knowing to what end in the end.  So, I am really not all out of faith; I mean, look, the Republicans just went out to dinner with the President, gay marriage is gaining tremendous support and acceptance, most of us don’t want a crazy person to get a gun, even if it means delving into private mental health histories and making legal gun-getting harder, and I have had a full human experience, ever-growing compassion, and a deep ability to love and love more, love better, despite my early, primal loss, and, probably, because of it.

           

            Hemingway said, and I paraphrase, “Life breaks everyone, and some of us get stronger in the broken places.”   Breakdowns give us the chance to rise up.  Shatterings can let the light in.  We, all of us, are torn.  And where the heart has been rent, love finds its place to repair.  That is not just a wish.  It is my belief.   It is what I have lived.  And, for our little ones, it will be, although and because they are torn.

           

           

CHANGES

"Changes"

I still don't know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets…

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man…


I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware
of what they're going through…

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't tell them to grow up and out of it
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Where's your shame
You've left us up to our necks in it…



Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Oh, look out you rock 'n rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the stranger)
Ch-ch-Changes
Pretty soon you're gonna get
 older…

DAVID BOWIE Lyrics

           

 I still don’t know what we were looking for.  Did we really think our public servants would serve us?  What, in the recent past, points to any sane, well-placed hope of that?   It seems it has all been said.  It seems futile to see our representatives as the heirs of those who wished that America be better.  It feels familiar, this almost indifferent despair, an oxymoron metaphoric of  “OUR PUBLIC SERVANTS.”   

This “sequester,” a word more appropriate to its application defining the forced isolation of jurors to prevent tainting the process of coming to just decisions, was hopeful in the extreme, and hopeless in reality.  But, to be sure, we have come to know that those so entrusted with the real well-being of real human beings would default, would disappoint, would destroy. 

And, I do believe, this dangerous group, capable of saying anything, doing anything—no matter the dire consequences, no matter where the pieces of shattered reason and civility will scatter—are bucking real change.  Yeah, change that they do not want to accept.  Change that scares the hell out of old, rich, powerful, white men.  Change that feels like a battering ram to their elite status.   Colorful change, not exactly the shades on their conservative palettes.  So, we get fucked, filibustered, and hear fanatical, fantastical rhetoric from token characters, like Republican Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who bears frightening resemblance in the lack of reasonable, needed boundaries in his impassioned and irresponsible rhetoric, as much as he does facially, to Joe McCarthy.

         “Friends Of Hamas?”  Are you fucking kidding me?  Or is it now, “…are you now or have you ever been, Chuck Hagel, an anti-Semite on terrorist payrolls?”   Thank you, Breitbart and bloggers for that sarcasm-turned-red meat sound bite, used, I hope, to the outing of the severely insane and dangerous in our legislature and their equally insane and dangerous constituents.  If you are that hungry, if your constituents are that hungry for hatred, lies, distortion, and destruction, I’ll sit by while public opinion against you gathers to critical mass, and sell tickets to your public damning.  IGNORANCE ought to be combatted, not used as a "viable" political strategy!!!  FOR THE AMERICA OF LINCOLN:  IGNORANCE IS NOT AN OPTION!!!  STAGNATION IS NOT AN OPTION!!!  We grow from CHANGE!!!  I so wish now that I was blogging way before coming back today, and that my blogs would have been so highlighted.  For honesty and well-considered insight, for bravery not bullshit.  For an embrace of the changes that the fearful crazies are falling all over themselves—and us—to buck.  To all of you I say, that the people that you spit on are quite aware of what they’re going through as they try to change their world.  Where’s your shame?  You’ve left us up to our necks in it…A million dead-end streets you lead us down...Trying to make us lose belief in CHANGES.  I stand committed to see you choke on CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES!

            Change.  The Catholic Church’s pope is “retiring.”  Not in the code book, Benedict.  In a world that has always been devastatingly influenced by religion, as much, if not more, as it has been healed or aided, this is a dangerous, disturbing development.  You should have, from the beginning, from your days as the Prefect of the Congregation For The Doctrine Of The Faith—otherwise known as the Holy Inquisition, which we all agree, needed a make-over—when you stated that sexual abuse cases must be directed to you, to your office, you should have defrocked “priests,” had them put to trial, and made to register as sex offenders, after serving prison sentences.  Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa...You protected them over the children—THE LAMBS OF GOD!!!  And then the Conclave makes you the Good Shepherd???  So inured are you and the Vaticanisti to the prevalence of this horrific crime, you accept the white dress and the scepter, but you must also accept the SIN!!!  Since God is truth, where’s Truth now, then, throughout your prefecture and papacy???  If God is love, where’s the Love for those victims?   You, so erudite, so brilliant, so much better suited for professorship, why did you accept the papacy if you could not live it out until death, suffering as Jesus did, unto death?  You abdicated responsibility in every way that most matters, if we are to believe in the basic tenets of Catholicism, decency, and the essence of God.  Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa...  And now you abdicate when a “reformed,” “modernized” (a shout out to the Second Vatican Council; now I believe we need a Third) ancient religion can serve as some kind of balance to the fanaticism of extremism in Islam—the fast growing religion in the world, with this small segment terrorizing its true adherents and the West, the East, the North, the South.  So, now off you will go to a cloistered nunnery, take the robes of a monk, and retire from the world for a life dedicated to prayer.  Well, pray hard, Joseph Ratzinger.  Pray for something good to come from the abdication of implementing canonical law, protecting criminal “priests,” but, most of all, pray for those Lambs of God and the renewal of goodness, and greater progressivism (yeah, right), and the uplifting of women religious (yeah, right!), and inclusion of homosexuals (YEAH, RIGHT!).  Again, CHANGE is a motherfucker.  BUT, so is karma (a most catholic—read that as small "c," “universal”—Truth, which has its counterpart in Catholicism as well, but does not nearly sound as clean, clear, or pretty...Purgatory anyone? How about Hell...).  Yeah, the children that you spit on are quite aware of what they’re going through.  Where’s your shame?  You’ve left us up to our necks in it…A million dead-end streets you have led us down...Trying to make us lose our religion as you fight CHANGES...

            I don’t know what I was looking for.  Decency?  Constancy?  Consideration?  Fairness?  Humanity?  That those who take SACRED oaths to SERVE, in Congress or Conclave, ought to adhere to them and do their just service?  To expect is to risk disappointment.  BUT, why should we abdicate the reign of Reason, and believe it is too much to expect?

            I don’t know why I waited so long to commit to writing again.  I have been falling under the well-designed acts that the unreasonable hope will lead to despair.  I admit, I have been feeling that the weight of “fighting the good fight,” in a world so ass-backwards, so difficult, so filled with power in the hands of the irresponsible and selfish has hurt me, held me under.  For that, for my “abdication,” I am sorry.  But, at least I found the strength to surface.  I hope I can hold my head above the troubled waters for more than just a little while.  Change is a motherfucker, but, at least I’m fighting the good fight: to try to make it happen.

Thanks for reading,

Joan

"This Is The Hour Of Lead..."

“…This is the Hour of Lead
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow
First-Chill-then Stupor-then the letting go…”

                                                                                         By Emily Dickinson

            We have had another death to deal with in our extended family.  Nicole, my cousin’s girlfriend, lost her mother.  It was not expected.  She had been physically well.  She died in her sleep, most mercifully.  But, now our Nicole is suffering an unbounded loss.  And, I have no words to say to her to make anything better.  I have read Shakespeare, the Greek Philosophers, a zillion others, too, and not a thing they have written give me solace, except the universality of the experience, the shared nature of it.  But, to be honest, who the hell cares about these truths at times like these?  I lost my father when I was 18 years old.  My sister, Ann, was 16.  People who tried to comfort me back then said stuff like this that made me crazy, and my mind responded in ways they would not have imagined:

“He’s in a better place now.”  My mind’s response, “Fuck you.”

or

“God called him home,”   My mind’s response, “Fuck Him.”

or

“God does everything for a reason,”  My mind’s response, “Fuck His ‘reasons.’”

Please keep in mind I was very young, very young.  But, so was my father.  I had no patience for those typical offerings of condolence. I had no sense of grace or how to grieve.  I was stuck in the easiest stage of grief without knowing it: anger.  Anger feels like strength, but it isn’t.  Anger feels like protection, but it isn’t.  Anger feels better than pain, but that is what it is really masking.  You want to yell and scream and strike out and hit things and curse people and beat the shit out of anything stupid enough to get in your way, but it is only the first of many stages of grief you will have to live through; and the longer you stay stuck in this one, the harder it is to get on with the rest.  When my father died, I was just a kid.  A teenager.  And, for teenagers, anger is often the safest, easiest emotion to have.  As I did whenever something went wrong in my teenage life, I turned to words and music for comfort:

“Oh very young ,
What will you leave us this time?
You're only dancing on this earth for a short while,
And though your dreams may toss and turn you now

They will vanish away like your daddy's best jeans,
Denim blue fading up to the sky,
And though you want them to last forever
You know they never will, you know they never will
And the patches make the goodbye harder still…”

                                                                                         “Oh Very Young,”  by Cat Stevens

My father only danced on this earth for a short while.  He was 53 years old when he died. We had a difficult relationship, like the metaphorical faded and patched jeans of Cat Stevens’ song; and, yes the “patches” made the goodbye harder still.

I loved my father dearly, but I was, in some very important, difficult ways just like him.  To quote Bruce, I was Adam’s Cain:  

We were prisoners of love, a love in chains,
He was standin' in the door, I was standin' in the rain,
with the same hot blood burning in our veins,
Adam raised a Cain.

My little sister, Ann, at 16, had more sense than I, and a better relationship with my father. My father’s death and the devastation of that loss were exquisitely translated for me by one single act that has forever stood as the representation of love and loss throughout my life.  She changed the carnation in his lapel.  People were all over the place.  They had to open up three chapels. It was back in the day where you had 2 or 3 day wakes before the funeral.  It was brutal.  And, in the overwhelming crush of condolences and the smell of funeral flowers, I see my little sister changing my father’s carnation.  Because she wanted him to have a fresh one.  Because she wanted him to look handsome.  Because, even in death, he was still her father and she loved him and did for him.  She took care of him.  He was, and always will be, her “Daddy.”  She was doing the loving while I was doing the warring.  As a result, she was able to send him off without any stain upon her conscience.  I, The Angry, was too busy plotting my revenge against God, too busy hating Him, too busy hating the guy at the gas station who wouldn’t sell me gas because there was gas-rationing going on at the time—1979—and the wrong last number on my dad’s license plate prevented the attendant from filling up the car.  I remember I got out and went after the guy.  “My father just died.  I need gas to get to his wake.”  “Sorry.”  “What?  What did you say? Didya hear me?  MY FATHER DIED!  YOU FUCKING MORON!  MY FATHER DIED!  FILL UP THIS CAR!  WHAT?  WHAT?!  FUCK  YOU!  FUCK YOU…”  my aunt told me to get back in the car.  Yeah, I was too busy hating the world to spend those last moments with my father in some kind of loving peace. 

My sister changing his carnation was the simple act that powerfully brought me into reality, and will remain the singular representation of real, enduring love to me throughout my life.  I love my sister.

I wrote an autobiography ten years ago.  Writing it was truly a labor of love.  It did strange and magical things to me.  For my Aunt Sue’s 75^th birthday, my cousins threw her a surprise party. Almost all of our vast number of relatives came.  At one point, my cousin Susan played a slide show of great family pictures, set to very moving old songs.  I started to cry and found I couldn’t stop.  I was crying from such a deep place, sobbing actually, and only figured out months later that I had reached the place where all the love and the pain was.  A metaphorical door opened inside of me and out came a book.  I have been up since 4 a.m. trying to decide if I should do this, should share any part of that writing more publicly.  I am struggling over doing this.  I want to know that I am not doing this gratuitously.  I know I am not writing for the masses, that very few people actually read me, but excerpting my book makes me feel very vulnerable and open to criticism.  I am not convinced that sharing it may help anyone who reads it to have some kind of catharsis.  But, I don’t know what else to offer, so I am offering a part of me, to whoever will let me in.  I only hope you  get something out of it.

……………

My father’s death.  Here is how it went:

            Two phone calls I can’t get out of my mind…My cousin Maria answers…a hot, cold streak of fear runs through me…“…but they can’t be in Puerto Rico that fast…” I go into my parents room, fall on my knees before the plaster saints on my Dad’s dresser, praying…the phone is ringing again…I stumble, trying to go from kneeling to running, and bounce into the hallway wall…Maria is crying, and still, but for a brief and bare second, it does not register… “Joanie, I’m so sorry, your father passed away…” that’s my Aunt Sue crying out these words to me…I feel like I have a concussion…I feel like I don’t know anything…don’t know anything but…but… “…I prayed…but I prayed…I prayed…to You…I prayed to You…You… “God Bless the Reale Home”…from a gilt-edged plate, a handsome, serene Jesus looks down on me from the lintel above the doorway to the kitchen…

Excerpt:

“Maria crying, Aunt Sue telling me she’s sorry, sorry that my father passed away, “Joanie, I’m so sorry, your father passed away.” Passed away. Passed away. “NOOOOO! NOOOOOO! I BEGGED YOU!  I BEGGED YOU! ON MY KNEES!  ON MY KNEES!  FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER! FUCK YOU!  OHHHHHHHH NOOOOOO!  NOOOOOO!  NOOOOO! NO! NO! NO! NO! YOU BASTARD! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! Me, to the picture plate of Jesus saying “God Bless the Reale Home.” Punching the metal pantry doors like a punching bag. Punching and punching and punching and punching. And cursing. Spitting. Bleeding. Crying. Blind. Blind. With rage. With grief. Impossible grief. Breaking the doors. Aunt Sue crying. Telling God, “Oooh, please forgive her.” Roaring, roaring like a wounded, bleeding animal.  “FORGIVE ME? FORGIVE ME? I DON’T FORGIVE YOU! I DON’T FORGIVE YOU! I DON’T FORGIVE YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! Jumping.  Jumping.  Fists flailing and bleeding. Jumping, swinging over Aunt Sue’s head. To punch Jesus, to knock that serene face from its broken promise. To try to kill Him. Kill God. Who deserted me years ago. Who proves I was right.  Today.  Today.  After years of hoping I was wrong. To be right. Like this. Today. “FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!”  Aunt Sue and Ann trying to stop me.  Trying to grab me. Hold me. Pulling me into the hallway, the bathroom. Slamming into the walls.  With my head.  Everything immoveable is God.  And I am His enemy. Banging my head. Wanting to feel the walls give.  My tears flying everywhere.  Landing on the edge of the tub.  Ann and Aunt Sue trying to hold me down.  Ann on my left arm. Grabbing the towel rack, with my right hand, nearly pulling it off.  Water running.  I can’t see.  I can’t see.   I can’t see...

                                                         

            And it is as if I have not seen past that day, that moment for all these years. All these very many years. Still smelling the flowers from the wake on my black jacket. The one I threw in the corner of our room and wouldn’t let my mother clean. The sickening smell of something dying. The dream two weeks before. My father in a light blue gray suit and hat. He never wore hats. And a cane. A matching cane. Like someone from another time. Getting into his new, blue gray Bonneville. Me, asking, “Dad--where are you going?”  He, smiling, telling me I can’t go with him. Me running to the car as he gets in. His casket, blue gray.  The suit my mother picked for him, blue gray. Ann changing his carnation, so small and all alone.  Before the crowd arrives.  She is not afraid to love, I’m thinking, my little sister, just sixteen, doing this aching and beautiful thing.  It is the most loving gesture.  The most heart-wrenching.  The one that tears me apart, over and over, each time I think of it.  Thinking of it always, it representing the moment I realize he is gone.  From this world.  From us.  Forever.   Thinking of Ann and my mother the first day of the wake. Seeing them kneeling, crying. My mother talking to him. Me, running. Running up the aisle. Trying to run out, run out, run out of there.  Running back to the grave. After finding the card from our cross of white and red flowers. From Ann, Tuffy, and me. Wanting him to be buried with it and finding it on the ground as we were leaving. Running back to the grave to throw it in. People running and grabbing for me. Scared I was going to go crazy, throw myself in. Showing them the card. Letting me go. Alone to the grave. To deliver this last message. This goodbye. The only goodbye I’d get to deliver. Walking to the limo alone. To him and from him through the stages of my life.

……………

Talk about anger.  Talk about sorrow.  Talk about regret and the need for forgiveness. Talk about reflection and the grace Time gives us.  The only way out of it is through it.  The only way out of it is through it.  Give yourself that gift.

            I hope anyone who has suffered a great loss can empathize with my experience.  I hope anyone who reads this can access feelings that need to be let out.  I hope anyone who reads this gets some small measure of healing from this sharing.

……………

To Terry,

            I will remember your warmth and sweetness whenever we were together.  I will remember the pure joy you showed, in a face lit up by a great inner light, when you opened the Christmas gift from Karen, Emmie, and me.  An Italian horn, a perfect fit.  But there is something else I want to say to you today:

Thank you for Nicki.  She is your gift to us, and a perfect fit. Let me tell you what a woman you raised: Nicole is an exquisite human being.  She is one of the rare, great ones that grace us all too little in life. Nic is a blessing.  Her spirit and smile are offered to anyone, everyone.  She is truly there for others.  She is gentle, generous, and a God-given gift to this world.  Nic is humble and gracious.  She lives to love others better, setting the great example of fulfilling God’s Golden Rule.  Nicole is love personified.  We are truly blessed to have her as a part of our family.  As you look down upon us from that most perfect place, may you empower the rest of your lovely family to gather together and help Nicole to get through the business of the living, which always remains.

May you rest in perfect love and perfect peace,

Joan