The Look of Impassivity

I am haunted by the image of Derek Chauvin's impassive face as he kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.  That’s a long time—try this. Stay silent for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. It’s a long time.

And yet through the whole time, the face of the policeman was impassive, unmoved, almost bored in appearance. Keep in mind, under his knee a fellow human being is struggling, attempting to breathe and PLEADING for his life –“I can’t breathe.”

As the video was played, replayed and replayed, I could not keep watching it. Floyd was dying, and Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck the whole time. So many things haunted me, but what struck me the most was the look on Chauvin’s face. Looking around. Not registering any feeling as to common humanity. Bored. 

It struck me because I had seen that look before. And then I remembered where.  When I was in my last job, teaching composition at the local community college, I had a classroom full of (mostly bored) students. Composition is the last course most students want to take but the one they ALL must take. It was not uncommon to lose the students’ attention. Usually, with my “teaching skills,” I was able to reconnect them (most of them) with the topic at hand.

But, one day I realized that bit by bit all of the students were not paying attention. It started with the row of students closest to the window. They began looking intently out the window at something that had them captivated. Then the next row, and the next until practically the whole class were out of their seats looking down from our 2^nd story classroom to the green quad outside. So, I gave up and joined them.

There under a magnificent huge tree was a hawk. It was sitting on the ground, and held in its talons a squirrel. The squirrel was struggling mightily, trying every which way to escape. But the hawk held fast. And while it did, it leisurely looked around. Head swiveling slowly one way, then another. All the while the squirrel struggled and the hawk seemed utterly indifferent. This battle continued for minutes—no idea how long, but it was clear the class was done. Finally, I suggested that we regather and continue whatever the lesson was. Reluctantly, many students turned back to their desks. I, however, could still see out the window. And I knew the struggle continued.

After minutes—maybe 8 minutes and 46 seconds—the squirrel ceased struggling. It lay on the ground motionless, still held in the talons of the hawk. After a brief respite, the hawk leisurely spread its wings, clasped its prey and flew off. The now dead squirrel dangled pathetically, its tail waving in the breeze.

The image of that hawk—predatory, seemingly disengaged from the struggle under it—that’s where I had seen a look like Chauvin’s before.  

Death Be Not Proud

I realize I haven't been blogging a whole lot lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking. In fact, I have..been thinking, thinking, thinking.

It is difficult for me these days to contemplate the world that is being remade. The U.S. has gone from a leader of the free world, to a near pariah. Leadership displayed as bluster, ignorance, prejudice and just plain nastiness holds the center stage. 

Of late, I find I can barely listen to the news. When I drive, I frequently have on satellite radio--NPR, or MSNBC, or CNN. But of late I can't bear to hear the drumbeat of destruction and the endless panel conversations about what it all means.  What does it mean anyway?

OK--so why the title of my post?  Death be not proud. Of course, the line is the opening for John Donne's Holy Sonnet 10.*  You can read the whole poem at the close of this entry.

So, what do I do instead of listen to the depressing news of the day?  I sometimes think about death. Lest you think me morbid or focused on a depressing subject, not so.  Every day, when I walk our dog, we go to a cemetery two blocks away from where we live. As I walk along, I frequently read the grave markers. I find myself doing the math of a lifespan in my head. Some are very short--mere weeks for babies who are born and then die. Some are several years--I do not know the circumstances, but there are possible explanations--a childhood disease, or maybe an accident.  Others that are several decades long--say in the 20s or 30s--offer another set of possibilities: killed in combat maybe.  Finally, there are the markers that denote a long life span. The common element for all, of course, is the inevitability of death.

So, why has this subject seized my mind? Well, perhaps it is because a friend of mine is dying. She is not a close friend, but a friend nevertheless.  She reached a point in her treatment for cancer when medicine could no longer "cure" her. So, she returned home and has been put on a diet which includes NO solids. Understandably, her death is imminent, even though she does not know the day.

Several days ago she posted on FaceBook "I'm still alive today... Friends visited so we have had a lovely day of conversations and a lot of puking actually. But it beats the alternative and we are laughing a lot."

Three weeks ago she posted this: "Sunday I had a very small group of close friends from church and other venues in my home for a Service of Transition, Anointing, and Healing. Padre did a service that was beautiful and so helpful for me as I was anointed like the dead are for burial and friends laid hands on me to pray. They covered me first in a funeral pall. Afterwards we celebrated the eucharist together. I wanted this particular blessing to mark that my upcoming death will be a sacred and holy transition. . .These past two weeks have been filled with notes of affirmation and wonderful shared memories helping me understand that I have lived my life as faithfully as I could, and spent myself in service to others as much as I could. I am rich in memories and friends around the world. Thanks be to God."

Clearly, this woman' approach to death is very much in keeping with the sentiment of John Donne's Holy Sonnet 10. 

And how does it connect in any way to the news of the day?  Just this. Nothing is eternal in this world. Powers and rulers and kingdoms all pass. History shows us that no human effort has lasted forever. Empires rise, empires fall. Rulers come, rulers go.  However, John Donne's assertion is that even though death rules over all, death itself cannot destroy eternity.

Heavy thoughts, indeed.  OK--time for my daily walk with our dog to the cemetery.
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Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

Thou’art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy’or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

by John Donne, 1572 - 1631

Remembering My Father

Composed by me, his eldest child, and read at his funeral June 30, 2017  

When someone dies, among the things that people recall are some of the last things said by that person.

• ·      When I visited him in the hospital, he said “Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes.”

• ·      when I visited him in nursing care after he was out of the hospital, he opened his eyes and said “Hi sweetheart.”

• ·      Two days before he died, he said “I loved your mother very deeply, and could not have been the man I was without her.  And then when she died, Verna Mae came into my life, and she was the right one for me at that time.  I love them both very dearly.”

• ·      Without any preamble, he said “Give my computer to ______ Mission when I am gone.”

• ·      And then, he said—“make sure you take everything off of the computer before you give it away.”

• ·      He also told me a joke—two days before he died.  Out of the blue…and even though I had heard it before, I marveled at the humor in him.

• ·      Finally he said—“I am so ready to die.  I wish the Lord would take me home. I want to go.” 

Here are a few of the things my dad said to me in his last days:

  

But words are not all that I remember about my father. These are some of my remembrances—

• ·      My dad taught me how to ride a bicycle. Of course, many dads do that, but mine taught me by walking along behind me, holding the bike (in the absence of training wheels), urging me to peddle, steadying the bike. Then when I got the bike going nicely along, he let go. Of course, I didn't know it, but I was peddling on my own. When I looked back, I wobbled and crashed, but a couple repeats--and I had learned to ride.
• ·      My dad always had time for me to crawl up on his lap. And he always had hugs for me (and my brother and sister, too).
• ·      When I was a small girl, my dad let me play with his hair. When he was tired in the evenings, he would sit down, and lean back. His eyes shut, he let me (perhaps even encouraged me) to comb his hair every which way. I had lots of fun, and I suspect he enjoyed the relaxation.
• ·      My dad let me play his 45 rpm records of classical recordings. He had a set of Beethoven's string quartets, and I asked to play them. My dad said--go ahead. That experience, along with some others, encouraged my love of classical music. My dad could have said--no, those records are too valuable. But he said--go ahead, and encouraged a musical taste in me.
• ·      My dad allowed me to make my own way. I remember a specific episode--we were on board ship crossing back to America, and the entertainment was a kind of gambling. Another passenger offered to let me play with $5--I asked my dad what to do. My dad said "you know what your mother and I think, but you decide for yourself." The message was--we don't approve of gambling, but you decide. Well, I did decide to use the money to play. And I didn't feel any regret, but the important thing was that my dad said--you decide.

A number of people have remarked to me, after reading my father’s obituary, “my, what a full, rich and interesting life your father had.” Well, that he did.

Many of you know the basics about his life. So, I won’t repeat that here.  I will, however, share a few stories.

When he was 18, his parents told him it was “time to move out.” They simply could not afford to feed three younger children and my dad.  Dad needed to keep working to gather enough funds to go to college. So Dad first worked on a farm in Lancaster County. Then he found a job as a butler in a wealthy home just outside of Philadelphia. Things did not go well—and he was dismissed from that job.  (It’s a long story…)

Then, in 1940, my father found work as a houseman, one of a number of servants, in the summer home of Henry McCormick. The McCormicks were a prominent family in Harrisburg.  My father’s duties included pressing Mr. McCormick’s suit daily, polishing his shoes, wet mopping the front porch weekly, and cranking ice cream weekly. My father also occasionally served as a driver to help with transportation. He even had a slight accident while driving one of these cars, but Mr. McCormick was a kindly soul and nothing came of the incident.

Dad was always interested in things mechanical—cars, machines, even in his later years, computers.  He told the story of a time that the two dignitaries came to visit the churches in southern Africa. Graybill Wolgemuth was a Mission Board member who came to visit Sikalongo and David wanted to take him to an out-station. He chose a school south of Sikalongo Mission, down the escarpment towards the Zambezi Valley, where road conditions were very poor and the road quite steep. The vehicle they had was an older one, and the brakes were in bad shape. Even with David using the foot brake and the hand brake, it was all he could do hold the car on the steep decline. David instructed the African helper who was along to find a big rock, and then get on the running board of the car. He then instructed the helper that if the car would start going too fast, David would call out, the helper should jump off and quickly put the rock under the front of the rear wheel to help stop the car. Graybill Wolgemuth was duly impressed with the conditions under which the missionaries worked.

In 1987, Dad and Mother moved to Messiah Village. Mother was insistent that they move there, rather than buy a house in the area. She had a sense that Dad might need the support that a place like Messiah Village could affort. And she was right. When she died unexpectedly in 1991, the Village and the people there helped my dad through that time.

But the other support that he received was marrying Verna Mae. About two years after Mother’s death, people began suggesting women who might be “approachable.” Truth is—Dad had his own ideas. He decided on someone he had known through her work in the BinC Missions Office—Verna Mae Ressler. He told me about her as he courted her. And, one day, as he got ready to go and see her, he said—well, he wasn’t sure that she was the one, maybe he should tell her so.  That evening when he got back from their “date,” he called me and said—well, we are engaged!

What a blessing Verna Mae has been.  All of us in the family can attest to that.

Now, he is gone. No more stories, but many memories. Thanks be to God for his life of service.

When Death Comes

(This is a blog post I first wrote in January, 2007)

I visited with my father today. While I don’t visit as frequently as I should, perhaps, I do try to get out (meaning to the retirement village where he lives) on a fairly frequent basis. At 87, he is in wonderfully good health and, as they say, in complete possession of all his faculties. I know it frustrates him when he can’t pull a word up as quickly as he would like out of his mental memory banks, but neither can I.

He has always been handy with things mechanical. When my mother died almost sixteen years ago, one of the things my husband and I did was buy my father a word processor. He had talked about writing up his memories in an autobiographical form, so a word processor seemed like a good way to facilitate that. He did set to work on his autobiography, vowing to “keep lying to a minimum.” As a former missionary, he has lived a full life with many experiences. One of the things that amazes me is his recall of place names and people names from decades ago.

It didn’t take long for him to outgrow the word processor and he got his first computer. He joined the Golden Mouse club at his retirement village and soon was learning the ways of the computer world. And like many seniors, he also moved into the cyber world of email.

When I visit, he frequently has a computer question. I certainly understand his reluctance to do some of the computer updating that needs to be done. Luckily for me, most of what he asks I can do. Several Christmases ago, he asked for help getting a new computer, and together we went shopping for his current desktop.

All this leads me to our conversation today. Understandably, my father is mindful of his mortality. His elder brother died almost two years ago, and my father knows that his life is not limitless. While we were talking today, he said that he would like me to do something upon his death. After my mother’s death, my father did remarry. I am very thankful for the wonderful wife he has, but she is not computer savvy. So, my father asked that, when he dies, would I please use his email list to inform all his email contacts of his death. It is a simple enough request for me to acquiesce to, and, of course, I did.

But I did think of that wonderful poem by Mary Oliver, When Death Comes, and hence the title of this blog. Oh, I don’t know when my father will die, and frankly, it is not a morbid subject for me. I know we are all dust—as the words in Scripture remind us. And, my father is a Christian, so his death, when it occurs, is not cause for sorrow. I wish him as many more years of health and happiness as he has. And I will inform his email friends when he is gone.
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My father died June 25, 2017, at age 98.

Stories in Stone

Nearby where we live there is a cemetery. With an atmosphere that is park-like it has become a favorite go-to walking place for me and our dog.

Years ago, two dogs back I used to walk our dog there.  That dog--an English setter (show not hunting) loved to see the squirrels there. One day, she spotted a squirrel who had not seen her, and for at least 15 minutes she inched up on that squirrel. Our dog's muscles were all aquiver as she silently inched one paw in front of the other. I think the squirrel must have had a near-heart attack when our dog suddenly pounced...but the squirrel got away.

Anyway, after a time, there came a day when the cemetery posted a big prominent sign you could not miss:  NO DOGS ALLOWED.  I was annoyed, and bemused. I thought--ok, no dogs. But squirrels, chipmunks, Canada geese, and foxes all running amok.  But, no dogs.

About a year ago, I decided to see if the dreaded NO DOGS sign was still there...by now, we had another dog, a lab mix--our sweet Ziva.  She gets many daily walks, so adding the cemetery aka park

would be an asset.  Sure enough, the sign was gone. So our walks there have commenced.

Since dogs like to take their time--sniffing every tree, or blade of grass, or whatever--we spend some time there. And I have taken to reading cemetery plaques.  These plaques or stones are flat on the ground, some made of marble and some of brass.  Whatever their composition, they all tell a story.

Herewith some examples:

--A name with a birthdate in the late 1890s, but death date. Someone was forgotten? Or didn't die (unlikely). Or the family either did not know or had not recalled where that burial plot was.

--Many graves with death dates in the late 1960s, most of them of young men in their early 20s.  Most likely killed in Vietnam--my generation's war.

--Two names side by side--or actually a double stone but with a name removed from its prior place. The one side has birth and death date, the other...blank. No doubt, the surviving spouse found someone new, remarried and decided to be buried elsewhere.

--several small stones with birthdate and death date the same day.

--finally, a stone with four names on it, all one family: mother, father, daughter, son.  What happened? Some tragedy. But what? An accident? or some other untimely end?

Whatever the circumstances, every stone a story.

Too soon old; too late schmart!

Confessions of a 70 year old.

Today is Søren Kierkegaard's birthday. That is note-worthy for this blog as it was Kierkegaard who noted that “life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that is must be lived forwards.” 

To put that philosophic thought another way, we have the Pennsylvania Dutch expression: we grow too soon old, and too late schmart.

Indeed.

This year, I celebrated my 70th birthday. I was born in February, just months before the close of World War II. Of course, I don't remember that event, but the proximity of my birth to the end of the last world war helps frame the span of my life.  It also means that I was on the cusp of the Boomer generation.

So by now, I should have the “understanding life” part down.  I do have a few confessions that perhaps have come with looking back over life and understanding it:

1. I don’t feel 70.  While I have no desire to be a 20 or 30 year old again, and while I have certainly matured, my inner sense is not all that different from what it was decades ago.

2. I don’t look 70. I recently had a conversation with someone who had come to do some work at our house. In the course of the conversation, I noted that my husband and I have lived in our house for 35 years--whereupon the worker asked how old I was. I replied--70. In response to my reply, the worker burst out--NO WAY. Then he asked how I managed to not look 70. The answer is:  good genes; good luck; and no smoking.  Of course, I could be like a well-preserved antique car that, suddenly one day, has all its wheels fall off.

3. And I feel 70.  OK, so this contradicts # 1 above.  Let's just say my MIND feels young, while my body throws in an occasional creak and moan to say "Not so fast."

OK—enough of confessions.

Here’s another part of growing older.  There is a somewhat tired joke that the first thing one does in the morning is read the obituaries—if your name isn’t there, go ahead and make a cup of coffee.  Well, I do confess to reading the obituaries. Having lived in one place for 50 of these 70 years, there are many names I recognize.  And occasionally, someone’s death is recorded and I write a note to the ones who remain behind.

It isn’t so much that growing old makes you think more often of death—although of course you do because—well, because it’s inevitable. That’s one of the understanding life insights.  What I do think of is that the passing of a person from this life leaves behind a void. And for a time, loved ones and acquaintances remember. And then we fade from view.

I want to note in particular a recent death of a blogging friend—Philip Robinson. I never met Philip in person, but through his blog I learned to value this singular person. His blog—entitled Tossing Pebbles (which is still available to read) reveals a man with a wide array of interests. Through his blog I learned that he was a father who raised a son virtually alone; that he was a very proud grandfather to three accomplished grandchildren. I learned that he was interested in and dedicated to subsistence living—I shuddered every year when I read his blog about chopping enough wood to see him through a northern Canadian winter. He was passionate about history and about politics. It was always a delight to read his thoughts in any given blog post.

Now, he has died. He learned in January that he had pancreatic cancer, and even though he had surgery and received good medical care, this aggressive disease overwhelmed the best efforts. 

Living life forward, understanding life backwards. Thus it ever was. Or as my Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors might say “too soon old, too late schmart."

Keep Calm ... and Carry On!

During World War II, the British government prepared a motivational poster designed to help the beleaguered population "keep its stiff upper lip."  The slogan it championed was--KEEP CALM and CARRY ON.  Millions of posters were printed, but they were never distributed.  The posters were rediscovered in the year 2000--and a whole new icon was born.

I humbly suggest we get some of those posters and distributed them NOW--to members of Congress, to newscasters, to local politicians, to everyone who is now freaking out about Ebola.

I am not suggesting that we take this emerging epidemic lightly.  But we really need to get a grip.  There were Congressional hearings held today, and legislators took their turns when it was their time to query--and took whacks at the head of the CDC as if he were a piñata hanging from the ceiling and they each had a brand new stick to flail away at him.  

I couldn't help but recall the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic.  And how little concern there was among politicians then.  Medical personnel knew they had a mystery disease on their hands.  Perhaps the fact the earliest people suffering, and then dying from this disease, were gay was part of the reason for the studied ignoring of the emerging epidemic.  

When AIDS first emerged as a true epidemic, I was working for the state medical society.  Part of my job was to work with scientific areas--so I helped staff committees of physicians who were trying to address the disease that was eventually called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome--AIDS.  One day, I got a call from a public health doctor working at the state Health Department.  The Health Department had prepared an informative brochure with tips on how to prevent the spread of AIDS.  One of the precautions listed was to "wash."  When the pamphlet was sent to the governor's office for vetting, the question came back--wash what?   When they were told, they insisted that precaution be removed!  The level of ignorance--or lack of caring--was such that the governor's office then did not want to acknowledge that part of the means whereby AIDS was spread was unprotected sex.  And that knowledge, not ignorance, was one way to  help reduce transmission.

Fast forward 30 some years--and now we have legislative hysteria ruling the day.  Frankly, ignoring an emerging epidemic is NOT the way to control the disease.  But then, hysterical misguided politically-driven suggestions are ALSO NOT the way to control the disease.

In today's hearing, one of the suggestions was--REFUSE TO ALLOW ANYONE TO ENTER THE U.S. who is traveling from a west African location.  Really?  Well, people can travel from countries in west Africa to many other countries and then enter to U.S.  Only, now, public health professionals wouldn't KNOW the person had been in west Africa.  One of the biggest enemies of controlling an epidemic is ignorance.  Another enemy is fear.

We have both in abundance right now.  To hear the newscasters tell it, it's just a matter of time until everyone touches something that someone who heard about someone who had Ebola touched, and so because of that, we will all die.

Well, true--we will.  But not from Ebola.  There will be some other reason.  Many things are so much more threatening--smoking.  Handguns. Drunk drivers. Texting drivers. Lack of immunization.  Polluted drinking water. And on and on it goes.

It seems like a good time to break out the posters--KEEP CALM and CARRY ON.

Matters of the Heart

Of late, I have been ruminating on the nature of the human heart.  More about the reason in a minute.  One of the things I think about is the way in which humans are generally binary—most of us are born with two of everything: two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs, two lungs, two kidneys, etc.  When we get to some parts of us, we are born with one—one brain, one heart, one liver.  These one of a kind parts of our bodies are, understandably, mostly indispensable.

For centuries, humans thought of the heart as the center of human life—kind of a brain, seat of wisdom and knowledge and moral judgment, as well as of all life.  Understandably, when you consider how indispensable the heart is.  Oh, I know other organs are indispensable—your brain, for example.  But there is something about how we view the heart that is just...well...different.

So, why this rumination?  Well, as I have previously written, I had experienced over the past several years bouts of atrial fibrillation.  That essentially occurs when the heart begins to put out conflicting signals as to when to beat.  The heart functions on its own electrical system—the S-A node setting the pace, and the A-V node bridging the atria and the ventricles.  In atrial fibrillation, another area sends out a rogue signal to beat, somewhere in the atrium, so the atrium beats, and then the S-A node sends out its signal, so the heart beats again.  Chaos—yup, that’s what it is.  A good description of what it feels like is a fish out of water flopping around on the deck.

And that’s what I have experienced.  The immediate correction is to shock the heart back into regular rhythm—which I have had done several times.  The first time the “cure” lasted for a year and a half.  Then the interval shortened to a year, then less, and finally to several weeks.  So it was time to consider another option, if there were one.

Well, TA DA, there was one.  It’s called cardiac ablation.  I’ll let you go here to see what that entails.  It is not a simple procedure.  The doctor advised my husband and me it could take 4 to 5 hours. Mine took a bit over 6 hours—so, I am told.  I don’t recall any of that, of course.

Before I went into the hospital, I told very few people.  No need to parade my medical history around and share it with the world.  Naturally, my husband knew, and our children with their spouses.  My father, and siblings knew.  Also a handful of friends.  That was it—no posting on Facebook or any such public place.

The day before I went into the hospital, one friend called and asked if I was nervous.  Well, I pondered a bit—and said, no, not really.  Then my dad asked how serious the procedure was—could it result in death?  Well, the answer is it could—rarely does, though.  But, the same can be said about getting in a car and driving down the highway. 

Did I think about death?  Naturally.  I think about death from time to time.  I am not immortal. The bargain of life is we are born, and we die.  I also like the opening words from my denomination’s Brief Statement of Faith:  “In life and in death we belong to God.”

So, while I think about death, it holds no fear for me. In fact, I have mused that dying during surgery would be an “easy” death compared to what some people go through.  It is for the living that death is hard.

Oh, please don’t think me morbid—this blog is, after all, about “matters of the heart”—both in the sense of what our hearts mean to us as living biologic creatures, and also what our hearts mean to us in those that we love.

Perhaps a brief poem by X. J. Kennedy (whose birthday is today, August 21, as I write this) speaks words I would say--

“In Faith of Rising”
When all my dust lies strewn
Over the roundbrinked ramparts of the world
I can be gathered , sinew and bone
Out of the past hurled
Delaylessly as I
Flick thoughts back that replace
Lash by dropped lid, lid to eye
Eye to disbanded face.
No task to His strength, for He
Is my Head—Him I trust
To stray the presence of His mind to me
Then cast down again
Or recollect my dust.

And then these words, from Sir Walter Raleigh, who penned them the night before his execution.

"Epitaph"
Even such is time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust
My God shall raise me up, I trust!

In matters of the heart, I trust.

Telling

We are overwhelmed with the incredibly sad news of the events on December 14 in Newtown, Connecticut. 

One of the most wrenching details for me was about the way frantic parents had gathered awaiting news of their children.  One by one, children and parents were reunited, until—finally—there was only a handful of parents remaining.  While there was a protocol that was to be followed, apparently the governor of Connecticut thought that prolonging those parents’ agony was simply cruel, so he straightforwardly told them—if your child isn’t with you, they aren’t coming home.

Some people have criticized the governor for being so blunt.  But, his approach was the right one.

I don’t know if you have ever been in a situation where you have to be the one to tell the bad news.  I have. 

Many years ago, my father-in-law suffered a catastrophic health event, a dissecting aortic aneurysm.  He was rushed to the local hospital, and family members were quickly summoned.  We all gathered in the critical care unit awaiting news of his status as he underwent diagnostic tests.  During that time, the assembled family decided that someone needed to travel to his home town and be with his elderly mother.  That lot fell to me.

When I reached the home, I tried to comfort Grandma as best I could.  My father-in-law was her eldest child and very much a mainstay for her.  Suddenly, the phone rang.  When I answered, it was my husband calling to inform me that his father had not pulled through, and had died even before he could be operated on.  Something in my tone of voice tipped Grandma off—and, even though “the plan” was to wait until the pastor arrived to tell her, she demanded: Is he dead?

I had a choice—I could have postponed responding, temporizing and delaying the news until the pastor arrived, or I could answer her straightforwardly and honestly.  I chose the latter.

I replied simply: Yes, Grandma, he’s gone.  Immediately she began wailing and rocking back and forth.  After a bit, as I held her, she calmed down a bit.  I read some of the Psalms to her as she quieted.  Of course, my immediate telling in no way lessened her grief, but it gave her immediate information instead of making her stay in a suspended state, fearing and guessing the worst all the while hoping against hope it wasn’t true.

Of course, I don’t know if Governor Malloy was going through a similar calculus, but his decision to tell immediately was a small kindness in the midst of horrific grief.