So Much For No Sequestration

I didn't know what the word "sequestration" meant until recently; in case you don't know, it's a term that refers to the making of general, broad-sweeping cuts in government spending due to budget shortfall.  

During the final 2012 Presidential debate, Obama was asked about the budget sequester, and he said, "It will not happen."

Unfortunately, though, it is happening.  Funding for categories of things in the budget are being cut and/or put on hold indefinitely, including Head Start education programs, food inspection, and medical research.  Instead of looking at items in the budget individually to see where cuts can be made without causing long-term, wide-spread harm, with a sequestration, entire categories are being stricken from the budget.  To me, making cuts in this way seems haphazard, short-sighted, and scary.  Maybe careless, lazy, and desperate too.  Actually, there is a one-word descriptor to describe the "plan" that was used by columnist Robert McCartney in an article today in the Washington Post that I think is spot-on:  Dumb.  

               CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE

Some of the areas in which these crazy cuts are projected to be made seem like a gamble; maybe, just maybe, things will turn out ok despite the loss of funding.  One area, though, in which cutting support in such an extreme fashion is literally a matter of life and death is medical research.  As the article above says, $1.6 billion is slated to be cut from the budget of the National Institutes of Health, which is already underfunded.  "NIH grants pay for most of the basic research in universities and laboratories across the country, [which] has led to practically every major U.S. medical breakthrough since World War II," McCartney reports.  

I read a lot about research in the areas of cancer and other diseases, and lately more and more often I've been seeing information about how we are so close to figuring out a cure for many of them.  Not just a treatment - a cure!  Obviously, without funding, this research will be put on hold or even shut down, and that swings the making of these cuts over into the category of being downright immoral, in my opinion.  

I wonder if the members of Congress and the President actually recognize what will happen; I wonder if they have thought about the implications of the cessation of medical research, either in broad terms or in a personal sense.  I doubt any of them have lived their lives without being touched in some way by cancer; maybe they should sit and talk for awhile to someone they know who is fighting or who has fought it, or maybe they should look at a photo of someone they've known personally who has lost their life to the disease, just to be sure they realize what they are doing with such over-zealous use of their red pens.

I realize it's challenging to figure out where spending cuts should occur when there is a budget deficit, but I'm pretty sure nobody has ever told the members of Congress or the President that their jobs would be carefree or easy.  There are difficult decisions ahead for them to make, for sure, but trying to solve the problems by simply indiscriminately slashing entire categories is just plain - and here's one more word to describe the whole thing - cowardly - and they should be ashamed.

Missing Him

A couple of weeks after my dad died, a friend of mine who had lost her mother a couple of years before that told me that the thing that left her with the most sadness since her mom's passing was thinking about the senses associated with her mom.  I didn't really understand what she meant at the time; I wasn't able to isolate what the worst or the most difficult part of all of it was because it all seemed so unbelievable and so horrible at that point.

I know now what she meant.  Thinking about my dad's hands, his legs, his wrinkles, his face, his voice, his laugh, his smile, his eyes - all of his physical presence - and how I'll never be able to be around them again makes me feel so sad, so lonely, and so very desperate.  

Sometimes I get a little glimpse of what I think for a split second is my dad, and in that moment I am like a drowning person struggling to get back to the surface of the water for air.  

About a month after my dad died, I was driving to work and saw a man that resembled him driving a car just like his.  I had to pull over to the side of the road and catch my breath.  

For months after he went on ahead, I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I'd heard him calling my name, just like he did so many nights when he was sick.  

As I sat crying on the night of the six-month anniversary of his death, I picked up my cell phone and impulsively texted "I love you" to the cell phone number by his name in my list of contacts.  A few minutes later, I got a response that read, "Who even is this?"  I felt like I'd been sucker punched.  Part of me wanted to text back, "Dad!! It's me! Are you ok?"  but I just kept sitting there crying, and after a few minutes another message flashed on the screen that said: "I think you have the wrong number."  

Several times when I've heard a group of people singing, I've thought I could pick out the sound of his voice singing above all the rest.  Each time that has happened, I let myself look into the crowd, just to make sure.

About six months ago, I posted the last part of the Behind the Scenes Story on this blog.  The song I chose to link to at the end of that entry was Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here."  My husband, who, incidentally, doesn't usually read this blog, invited me to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to Natchez, MS, with him a few days later.  While we were there, we asked around to find out where a cool bar was and ended up in a bizarre little place that was literally built into the side of the levee, a pub called Under The Hill.  

Only a few minutes after we walked in and sat down on our barstools, a guy started playing his acoustic guitar, and his first song was that exact Pink Floyd song.  Luckily, the darkness of the room hid the tears that rolled down my face as I sat there and listened in awe to the music.

This past summer, we had an accidental "iCloud" syncing of all of the Apple devices in my household, and all of our Contact Lists were blended together.  I didn't think too much about it until a few days later when my phone rang and I looked at the screen to see that it was showing up as "Dad" calling.  Evidently, my daughters had my husband's phone number listed under "Dad" in their Contact List, and so the iCloud sync had added that into my phone so that my husband's call showed up that way on my phone.  In the split second it took me to realize what had happened, part of my brain actually believed it was my dad calling me, and I felt my heart sink into my stomach when the reality of what was really happening dawned on me.

On the night before we left to take my older daughter to college for the first time, I was sitting outside on my deck and noticed that the wind was blowing through only some of the branches of one of the many trees in my backyard.  It was kind of eerie, and the words, "Hi, Dad," went through my mind.  About 15 seconds later, an owl hooted from in the woods behind my house.  I couldn't see it, but I exchanged a "Hello?" with the owl several times before the hooting and the isolated wind-blowing stopped.

A couple of weeks ago when my family was in New Orleans, I took my younger daughter and her friends to see the hotel where my parents stayed every February when they went for a business convention.  There, by the fountain in the lobby of the hotel, I thought for a split second that I saw my dad out of the corner of my eye, but, when I turned to look more closely, there was no one there.  

On the surface, it seems like getting a tiny glimpse or feeling a split-second connection to a loved one who has gone on ahead would be soothing, and maybe one day it will be for me - but now it mostly feels like salt (or something even worse) being poured in a wound. 

"Although their physical form is gone, you are not living your life without him or her. To live truly without them would be to never have known them. Instead, you continue to live with them infused in your heart, in your memories, in your spirit. You live with their love etched into your being. They will always, now and forever, be a part of you."