My sister, after suffering beyond words, from schizophrenia, and conditions of day to day life bereft of family,  — passed on Saturday July 27.   The meaning of a life cannot be positively expressed, but the absence is felt, much as the ruin of a edifice can be felt.  I miss her and will always wish that the play of time and chance had been different for her.  Is there compensation in the afterlife?  No one knows, least of all those who say they have no doubt.  What we can do is practice compassion for one another, knowing that blood kinship is the ancient symbol of a greater and more definite tie, that of humanity, and that of the earth as our birth mother and our final home.

I attempted to say as much at Linda’s funeral.  The message is not information, rather something that is felt at the right time.

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Of wider import two things come to mind this morning.  The President is scheduled to visit Ohio and Texas today.

Why?!

The President symbolizes our refusal to speak with one another, our reluctance to seek a common humanity, a substrate to the differences of culture, of birth-language, of national origin, etc.  Isolation whether fostered by wealth, or by race-based nativism ends in the cul de sac of nihilistic rage.  It is not enough to extinguish the flame of one’s own life.  One insists upon company.  Families are plunged into grief and society into chaos.

Then there is the matter of the medication that with two days of effort I managed to purchase from Walgreens.  Careful planning, foresight, does not guarantee that an important medication will not run out.  You’d think that a non-narcotic med that can be purchased,  90 days supply at a time, from overseas, costing about $150.00, would be a available from the local pharmacy.  At last I had the prescription filled, and paid $650.00 for a 30 days supply.  The receipt was another way of saying:

Life in America, the greatest country of all!

The register printout served as a tangible statement of American values, an expression from a corporation of what matters most to a majority of us, at this juncture of place and time.  Our place and time is perfected in another ruin: greed.