Farewell My Love

Is this the final hour?  Darling, where did you go?  I sense something bad has happened to you and I can't reach you.  I can't touch you and I can't hug you.  We both knew this day would come but we never wanted to face it because we were too busy living, dreaming and hoping we would go on forever.  But we were running out of time and you knew it before I did with your statement "I'm on borrowed time here."  It was the first time you had ever said that to me in all the years I've loved you.  During happier times you would tell me "Who's going?  I'm not going anywhere," when I would broach the heavy subject of death.  You had also began to talk about the importance of Wills.  "What's all this talk about Wills," I would scold you.  "Remember you're not going anywhere."  Ours was a very special relationship from the beginning.  We developed a great friendship and found that we had much in common despite our different backgrounds.  You said you felt extremely comfortable with me and the same thing happened to me.  I know the exact moment I began to love you, it was when I noticed your special sensitiviy to animals so similar to my own.  It was when I realized you were the brightest, kindest man I ever met and also the classiest.  It was a forbidden relationship from the beginning but we drifted into it helplessly, sharing many wonderful, beautiful memories.  You made me happy and I made you happy, so we stole years of happiness, being extremely careful not to hurt anyone.  I spent last Wednesday crying and I didn't know why, I wasn't even thinking about you.  You'were having a procedure but I knew you'd be alright, you were always alright, worrying about everyone around you except yourself - a very strong, courageous person who never lost his vibrancy, even when the passing years left their mark physically and psychologically.  And now I sense this is truly the end of the road for us because after having been practically inseparable from the moment we met, you have disappeared without a word; and only the implacable hand of death could do that to us.  The most painful thing is that it came about so suddenly, so brutally, without time to tell you farewell my love, without time to tell you what you meant to me, but you always knew it and in your own words told me many times when I regretted not telling someone I lost that I loved them, "some things don't have to be said."  I am, however, thankful for small mercies.  You went while still active and brilliant, interested in world affairs and politics.  You went while you still loved life with a passion and filled your days with activities.  You went while you could still celebrate Thanksgiving in style, full of good cheer, food, friends, family and laughter.  You were supposed to have "little or no alcohol" but you always cheated.  You hated limitations and still wanted to experience that familiar buzz.  You were planning another glorious Christmas celebration and I'm really heartbroken you left us so close to your favorite holiday.  If you could have chosen your exit, you'd have never chosen this precious holiday - not only for yourself but for your family - you'd have been devastated to ruin it for your loved ones.  The passing years may have slowed you down but never marred your lust for life.  I'm going to be strong for you now my darling, because I know that's what you would want me to do.  But don't ask me not to mourn you, don't ask me to move on.  I can not mourn you publicly because the world will never understand, but I will mourn you secretly till the end of my life, the way I loved you for so many years.  You were the love of my life and I was yours.  We met late in life but at least we got to experience that elusive, much yearned for and sometimes never found "many splendoured thing."

ENOUGH!

Enough of monsters who kill innocent people.  Enough of trying to explain the unexplicable.  Enough of mothers who refuse to see reality and shelter these people.  Nancy Lanza only saw the intelligent side of this monster and battled the world for him.  He repaid her with bullets in the face while she slept.  This evil man was very, very sick from the beginning and should have been institutionalized or on medicine permanently, but Nancy saw the world as being wrong, not her so called "brilliant son."  She tried to bond with him by introducing him to arms and she paid the ultimate price but so did twenty innocent children and the courageous adults who tried to save them.  This man couldn't feel physical or emotional pain, he was already dead inside and the deadly rampage was a matter of time.  It's time to take action now.  Obama's reaction to the tragedy might be his finest hour, now it's time to act on it Mr. President.  Gun control is not going to work on this country, but you could demand that each school, each public place hire security personnel because nobody is safe in this society anymore.  It's time to face facts.  Shootings are happening in movie houses, in malls, and now in our most sacred place, schools.  Monsters like Lanza are aware of the vulnerability (he at least had the decency to kill himself - the monster in Norway didn't) but if there were armed guards at the doors, these monsters would never commit these atrocities, or at least they would be killed faster and that would minimize the damage.  We have to face reality here.  We need armed guards everywhere, supermarkets, drugstores, subways, any place where monsters like Lanza might take a notion to do the most damage.  I don't want to hear that there's no money for these measures, if we have enough money to send to Pakistan and Egypt (countries who are no friends of  ours), we should have enough money to protect our citizens here.  It's time to change our priorities and choose country and our beautiful children first.  It's time to get mad, it's time to shout outloud ENOUGH, ENOUGH, we're not going to take it anymore.  Mr. President, don't let this outrage fade, let's not go back to the past where we screamed and hollered for a week and then went back to normal, not this time, let's change the law once and for all.

Adios Jenni

Sabes?  No te conocia y me paso contigo lo que me ha pasado con Selena, te he descubierto despues de tu tragica muerte.  Pero te has ganado otra fanatica desde el mas alla.  Tu historia me ha tocado muy profundamente.  Eras una mujer heroica, perseverente, que luchaste en la vida contra viento y marea para llegar a lo que llegaste.  El destino te arrebato la vida en tu mejor momento, estabas en la plenitud de tu vida y a punto de cruzar a America.  Son esas ironias de la vida tan tristes e inexplicables.  Lo mismo le paso a la inolvidable Selena a mucha mas temprana edad.  Me encanto tu musica y comprare tus discos.  Se que fuiste una mujer alegre, fuerte y muy apasionada que vivio intensamente.  Habias presentido tu muerte y dejaste dicho lo que querias que se haga en esa bella cancion que le dejaste al mundo, querias una fiesta enorme en la playa donde naciste, una festejacion de tu vida, una celebracion llena de dicha y eso se debia hacer, porque asi vivias tu vida, a pesar de todas las tragedias que te toco soportar.  Tenias tu arte y ese era tu refugio, un arte que compartiste con el mundo muy generosamente dando a otros felicidad.  Gracias Jenni, dejaste huellas muy grandes en el universo y no te vamos a olvidar.

Kate's Extraordinary Fame Claims First Victim

By now I guess everyone knows that Jacintha Saldanha, the Indian nurse at the hospital Kate was admitted with severe morning sickness, killed herself because she couldn't live with the disgrace she thought she brought to the hospital by patching the call through to the two Australian pranksters who just wanted to have some fun.  Not to defend them or anything but I don't think that they thought their actions would lead to a suicide in a billion years.  The fact that nothing particularly intimate was divulged other than "She's resting comfortably and had a good night" seems irrelevant in this case due to the tragic reaction of the nurse who obviously had a very tenuous hold on life.  The roots of her self destruction had to have been in her character or she would have never done such a thing over such an insignificant, harmless thing.  She was probably a perfectionist who took a lot of pride in  her performance and her own worst enemy, so she built the whole thing in her mind as a catastrophe, a national disgrace, and was forced to do something about it thinking only of her shame and mortification and not of the husband and children she was leaving behind. This is extremely sad to say the least and Kate must be seeing the harrowing costs of her extraordinary fame very closely indeed.  This is after all, the same fame that destroyed Princess Diana, haunting her from the very beginning of her marriage and ultimately killing her.  We all would like to be a face in the crowd but this kind of fame is destructive, it's overwhelming, and as we see with this tragedy, it can be deadly.  And although Kate has the love and support of her husband (something the lovely Diana didn't) she should thread very, very carefully.