Nostalgia and all it entails...

I'm a sucker for nostalgia. And the enchantress one finds in the Beauty and the Beast story, nostalgia is an aspect of life most two-sided indeed.

I start out with a little story; the other day, I was in a Target (as I far too often am) and saw a shirt that had been in the store for a while. It is a red plaid shirt - a lovely tartan for which I would love to discover the clan name, but I digress - that I may never actually wear, but held special memories; the plaid was the same as was once displayed on a simple bow tie that my childhood teddy bear once wore (before it disintegrated from age). That, and it was remarkably similar to plaids my since deceased grandfather in Michigan wore almost daily. Needless to say, the shirt itself drummed up wonderful memories that brought me a lot of happiness... and it was on sale, so I ended up giving in and purchasing the shirt. And hell, listening to myself here has made me resolve to one day MAKE it work...

This has been a recurring theme in my life, these past few weeks/months... within a relatively short amount of time, both of my parents have been forced to deal with their parents' estates and belongings - one because of a death, and the other because of a stroke (although both remaining grandmothers are in need of constant care, and thus have been privy to moves into rest homes... one even to a different part of the country). I suppose this is a fact of life, but in my selfish little brain, it was a fact of their life, and I suppose I didn't really give it the thought that such a prospect deserved. But then, the prospect became burgeoning reality, and hit home.

My father, as of late, has been away on business... so much so that he was, technically, living out of state - frankly, it speaks volumes to his abilities to juggle that, the job he was asked to do there, his own mother's condition, the conditions surrounding my mother's mother, and then... well, me and my brother. That being said, this business is now mostly over, and he is back home; this has afforded him the time to think about his future... retirement and the like, and how he'd like to prepare for the time when all the above-mentioned challenges will one day become mine and my brother's. Thus, he's been talking of redecorating the house, sprucing up property value (for a time when home prices might not be so low), and getting rid of unnecessary and discretionary items that would be merely a hindrance on the process of estate planning and sale. He walked be through the heirloom pieces we posses and spoke of why they were special... he showed me what he might want to rid the house of (and some of the things I jumped at and said to give to me... I'm not as ready to let go of some things... even some things that I have no actual connection to other than the fact that they have been a part of what my brain considers "home" for so long).

He wants to change the way he lives in order to prepare for the way he and my mother will die, is the long and short of it... and it scared the hell out of me. I got all emotional again, as I so often do... but at least this time I kept the brunt of it bottle up; no need for tears. But regardless, I can't help but feel a little affected by my parents' apparent willingness to prepare for their own earthly demise.

In a perfect world, I would assume that each individual would contemplate their own end and not be bothered with or worried by the ends of others. But this ain't no perfect world, and it is very apparent to me that I will constantly be affected by the deaths or impending deaths of others; my grandfathers are, in fact, dead, my grandmothers both to follow within a few years, I shouldn't wonder. I find no pleasure in that, but I am damned and determined to find peace in it, somewhere... because it will occur for my parents as well. It's already happened for some of my friends, and that is unfortunate; they were young - too young, I felt, to have to deal with such a predicament as the death of a loved one.

Well, I don't know what else to say on the matter, except that it has weighed heavily on my mind these past few months... and to think I would never have thought about it had my parents not been going through all of this... but as I said... fact of life, right? Here's hoping; I intend to follow my parents' examples, as they are both lovely people for whom I would not trade the world... however, soon enough, they will be forced to trade the world for the shuffling off of this their mortal coil...

*Shiver*

So I'm markedly curious about President Elect Obama's choice of Rick Warren to perform the invocation at the inauguration (wow, say that five times fast). It confounded me so much so that I thought "why not look up the rules that made him make the decision?" So I did...



... there aren't any, so it would seem. No, according to most sources, it would seem that the Constitution says nothing at all about the utilization of a bible or a pastor or priest or whatever to "swear in" a president. So it would then seem that the atheists are right; this whole deal is just a bunch of bullshit that is meant to clean the wounds of a beaten down right-wing and it would be a happier place were we to abolish the idea of a religious ceremony of any kind marking the beginning of a United States Presidency.



An interesting article in BeyondChron, a San Francisco online newspaper gave an interesting history of the process of swearing in, which I will cite here; author Tommi Avicolli-Mecca states:



"As an atheist I am offended that Christianity is being promoted at a state function. There’s no legal basis for its inclusion. The U.S. Constitution says nothing about a president using a bible in taking the oath of office. In fact, President John Quincy Adams used a law book, and Franklin Pierce and Theodore Roosevelt swore on no books at all. It’s not just presidents. In November, 2006, Minnesota U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison sparked national controversy when he chose the Quran as the book on which to lay his hand. The phrase 'so help me God' wasn’t even in the oath until President Franklin Roosevelt used it less than 100 years ago (though some claim it was Lincoln who first included it). The Constitution does not mention anything about a minister or other religious person giving an invocation or benediction during the swearing-in. It does forbid establishment of a state religion."



Gasp, I know.



It would seem that we have been duped, really, into thinking that we need to follow some sort of religious guidlines in order to have a viable leader. I agree whole-heartedly with the atheist idea of leaving the leadership of varied portions of the world to a more secular and worldly methodology; the person swears not by God, or Allah, or Vishnu, or whatever, but rather themself.



Goodness, how lucky do we have to be in order to get it right, you know?