Life: June 2004 Archives
Well, I missed it. Ronald Reagan's death, embalming, lying in state, feet-first parade up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, arsenal of salutes, all happened while I was away from town. My wife and I were in North Carolina visiting a friend whose terminally ill condition hits far closer to home.
The precision, the planning, the speed (with a pregnant moment or two for casket touching), the well-mediated solmenity had all the depth of a Miss America Pageant. Hard to believe that a nation can get a revered president in the ground, so to speak, with so much pomp and so much alacrity and not miss a beat, stub a toe, make a wrong turn, overlook a plaudit, expose a wart.
The televised media made hay with the Reagan hagiography. CNN and Fox had great days recounting how Ronald Reagan won the Cold War (Gorbachev, of course, was the outwitted, outgunned, out-charmed other half of the terminating equation). What a narrative those news execs weave! The Great Communicator. The Smiling Pragmatist. The Savvy Somnabulator.
By the time we returned last weekend to the Capital area, the whole thing had blown out of town, westward ho. The t-shirt vendors' racks of Reagan-wear already were looking wilted. The covers of Time and Newsweek already bore whiskers. Now it's Bill Clinton's official portrait, and George Bush squirming, having to praise the guy in a White House installation ceremony.
How to connect this stuff to poetry? Oh, I know. I recall Anne Sexton once describing a finished poem as "last season's bad cold." So with the "news" in Washington, D.C.
Two deaths this week. One is accomplished: that of Rondald Reagan, who passed on last Saturday at 93 years. Alzheimer's was the topic of discussion, at least through Monday morning. How ironic that a president and former movie star, whose life has been so thoroughly documented, has for ten years remained universally accessible to all but him. What must it be like to lose all knowledge of oneself except the immediate present? I am glad that the private journal I keep is filled with clues and signs that one day may help me recognize who I was, that is, direct addresses to my future self.
An aside: how quickly the Alzheimer's issue gave way to the reverant creation of the Reagan hagiography. At least by the network and cable TV media. How bankrupt these media are today! The Times, at least, plays back the more balanced picture of a man who made government the enemy of the people and presided over the largest transfer of wealth in U.S. history, from the poor and middle classes to the wealthy. That is, the largest until W. and his crowd came to town.
The other death is one that has yet to happen. My wife and I were visiting a friend in North Carolina this past week whose breast cancer has metasticized to her spine and, now, brain. Nothing could be more apparent to me than the losing fight for life she wages, or her realization that the battle is lost. The woman I sat with this past week is a ghost compared to the woman I knew eighteen months ago. Of course, this is a time when one acknowledges (seeks out) stories of miraculously "willed" recoveries.
And now I've found a thread: two deaths, two narratives. Ways of living in the world.
