"The Winter of Our Discontent"

We recently attended my wife's father's funeral. We had to travel down to "Little Havana" in Miami. It was a strange event.

We didn't get to the hotel room until 4:30am on the day of the funeral. Our flight was delayed out of O'Hare (surprise, surprise), and then we ended up in line for the rental car behind approximately 25 Cubans at 2:30am. At that hour, there were only two rental agents, and only one of the two spoke Spanish...in Miami. Brilliant! Teresa's brother started calling at 8am, wondering why we weren't at the funeral home for the funeral that started at 12:30pm. The family all sat with her father's dead body for a 24 hour vigil. It was a weird, Santeria kinda voodoo thing. We were in trouble with the Cubans, because we did not see sitting with her father through the morning after traveling all day and through the night as an enjoyable thing. We got a, "Well...if you make it to the funeral, you make it, I guess." Sideways, dysfunctional crap.

We got there, and Teresa's step-sister was clearly pissed at us. We had not moved down to Miami to care for Teresa's sick father. The problem was, he left Teresa and her mom very early on, and he quickly remarried. His new wife wanted him to herself away from his original family. So, Teresa and her siblings had been excluded from his life in most respects. On top of that, he made sure he paid for his own live-in care. All Teresa's step sister did was visit him once a week. She was acting like that was a huge burden that she, as a martyr, undertook from the kindness of her altruistic heart (insert sigh and violin music here). Teresa's brother was frantic, because Teresa's mom is suffering from advanced dementia, and he had to put together the funeral arrangements. Then, out of guilt, he sat with the body through the vigil. Therefore, he was stressed and exhausted. He is a good hearted guy, but Teresa had taken care of her mom for 10 years by herself at home. He showed up with some lofty, romantic ideas of family after years of surfing and smoking weed. Family, he is learning, is quite a bit messier than he originally thought.

So, we spent most of our time with Teresa's sister and her family. We all stood around talking quietly. Then, suddenly, without a word spoken or any warning, everyone stopped talking and walked to the casket. We followed with appropriate solemn looks. Each person approached the casket and shed a silent, appropriate tear, returning afterward to their respective position in the semi-circular formation. When all were finished, everyone dispersed again and talked in hushed tones. Approximately 12 minutes later, suddenly, without a word spoken or any warning, everyone again stopped talking and walked to the casket to repeat the cycle. This strange kind of ritual was repeated 3 or 4 times. Then we did a prayer service there. Then we went and did a funeral procession to the church for mass. My wife and I were more Catholic than anyone there, including her deceased father, so we weren't sure why there was a mass. Then we went to the mausoleum for two more prayer services. Holy Cow! That was a lot of prayer services.

OK, so we survived the whole day, and we wrapped it up with some awesome Cuban food. What I learned in all of this was simple. I was there for my wife. I was there to care for her. I did not pick a fight with any of her family, even though I had a hard time with the way they treated her. There are times when one needs to be a support and just keep opinions close to the vest. Also, I realized that families are the result of a great chain of decisions. We all make our choices. We put up boundaries with family members where we choose, and we open ourselves to family members in other areas, according to our own choosing. None of this is a problem, until someone chooses to regret those decisions or project the consequences of them onto others. We have to own our choices. If we all do that, a great deal of dysfunction is diverted.

In order to cleanse ourselves of all of this, Teresa and I went to a bar and watched the Packers win. The Packers heal a lot of wounds.

"Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark"

To see the news video referenced in this post, click here: News Video

I saw a news video the other day on ABC.com. An elderly African-American man was crossing a street in Hartford, Connecticut and a car swerved into the left lane to pass another car and hit the man, tossing him like a rag doll. He landed in the middle of the road and lay there. All of this was caught on a traffic camera a block away. The car that hit him did not slow down. In fact, it sped away and turned down a side street to get away from the scene. If all of that wasn’t disturbing enough, car after car drove by the man’s unmoving body, most of them had to actually slow down and drive around him. He was laying across the center line of the road. THEY SLOWED AND DROVE AROUND HIM!! Not a single car stopped to see if he was all right. The only good thing I can say is that they didn’t drive over him like road kill. Finally, a police officer driving down that road saw him and turned his lights on. No one called 911, the officer just happened to be driving that way. The man survived the accident, but he is now paralyzed. The traffic camera was too far away to get the license plate of the perpetrator, and currently no one is coming forward as a witness.

Would this all have been different if it was a white victim in a rich suburb, rather than a person of color in a poor, violent neighborhood? I believe it would have, but that is not the point. No matter how violent and disassociated from reality the people of this nation have become, there was always at least some care for the welfare of our fellow human. After 9/11, Katrina, and other disasters in this nation, we saw an incredible outpouring of compassion and care from the people of this nation. But now, have we fallen so far that we are frustratedly driving around injured bodies in the street? All I could think was, “Oh my God, this can’t be real!” I could not believe that people could be so sub-human. Have we learned nothing from the atrocities of Nazi Germany, Rwanda, or Croatia? We live in a nation where the life, liberty, and freedom of every individual is said to be sacred. To see such a lack of care for a human life makes me want to weep. I’m sure God is weeping at a divine level. But, seriously, can we expect any less in an abortive society?