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Politics and Culture in Plain Talk.
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Dad died Saturday night.
As he lay dying, we learned that a man fifty years younger than him had been executed by ICE on a Minneapolis street. We watched one video and then another of the incident. It was thuggery. It was murder. Want to see the First, Second, and Fifth Amendments trampled all at once? Watch those videos.
The Proud Boys stood back and stood by, and now they’re ICE agents. They’re the same undisciplined faux tough guys as before, but with badges. They have the full weight of the Executive Branch behind them—and the majority party in Congress. Kristi Noem, Donald Trump, and Congressional Republicans behind them.
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Their version of the United States of America is not worthy of my father’s presence in it. Dad was kind and nonjudgmental. He abhorred arrogance and trash-talking. He would randomly drop the funniest lines into conversation. He loved North Dakota in general, and Velva, North Dakota in particular. He could and would talk to anyone. By example, he taught me a kind of radical equality: I am better than no one, and no one is better than me.
The day Dad died, North Dakota gave us bright sunshine and then snow showers. It was -13 degrees Fahrenheit when we arrived at the nursing home. It got up to -1°F in the afternoon and was down to -14°F when he died. He would want you to know that. He grew up on a farm on the North Dakota prairie, a setting that teaches you to pay attention to the weather.
Mom was the same way. She grew up in the same setting. All of her letters began with a weather report. She died just before the 2020 election. No one saw it coming. No one knew to gather around. After her funeral, I wrote:
That pallid capsule Lying on puckered satin is not my mother.
It was both the truth and an attempt at self-consolation. Because when they closed the coffin on that pallid capsule, an overpacked container inside of me began to crack.
We’d been losing Dad to dementia for quite some time, so I thought I had already grieved enough that there would be maybe a bit of sadness and perhaps even a little relief that the decline had ended. On Saturday morning, I called the district whose convention I was scheduled to speak at to tell them I wouldn’t be able to make it. Dad was going to die that day. My throat grabbed at the words.
It’s warmer now: 7 degrees above zero. We’re meeting with the Lutheran pastor to plan the funeral tonight. The celebration of life will be on February 4th in the town my dad loved more than any place on Earth. Afterward, there will be food and some talk about the weather.
Then we will get back to making the world and this country the kind of place people like Dad would have made it.
No Subscribe or Support buttons today. You know that you can find me at hammerfornd.com and punchingup.com.
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