The Summer of My Discontent

In recent days I have been consumed with the passing of my mother in law and everything that has appeared in its wake. Matters of political note having barely registered.

And thus the four day party that was the Democratic convention has come and gone without my focus. Exhaustion my partner each evening, fatigue both emotional and physical leaving me no room to participate in the festivities on the screen.

It has been in so many ways the hardest summer of my life. First, my sister's illness crowding out  extraneous thoughts. Late June through the middle of July a blur of concern. A groundhog day of trauma and worry. 

After my sister passed, in what seemed a serious case of piling on, my mother in law, whose final act has moved for many months in slow motion, suddenly accelerated. And our family was thrust back into the blender, watching and waiting for another curtain to fall.

Today I begin the journey back. Two people who were such a large part of my existence now having been laid to rest. Two people I so admired. Two people I loved. Two people who by luck and happenstance, not only emotionally but geographically, occupied space on my very doorstep.

And so I apologize for not being able to report as to my response as to what has transpired over the past four nights in Chicago. I have seen snippets of what occurred, watched some Obama magic, read of the energy and the smiles that seemed omnipresent, that radiated across the Democratic nation. But it has been as if I drove by this scene, catching it for but an instant out of the corner of my eye.

I know, as I awake this morning, there is much work to be done to make the fantasy of this convention a reality. I just need a minute to catch up to the rest of you before I  latch on to the Kamala wave. A deep breath, a night or two of sleep and maybe one or two more tears, and I should be good to go.

The summer of my discontent having come to a fitful, sad conclusion.