[AT] Reagan Remembered (by Patti Davis) Off topic but great reading

[Danny Tabor]

--- DAVIESW739 at aol.com wrote:
> I got this off AOL today it is one of the most 
> beautiful things a wayward 
> daughter could say about her father.
> 
> Even if  you hated Reagan please read this as it
> pertains to all of us who 
> are getting  old and may face the same  fate.
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks Walt for sharing this with us. It hits home for
us young folks to. Not only because I come from a
tight knit family but also President Reagan (ray-gun)
was a childhood heroe of mine. Still is. As a young
boy I was glued to the television grasping to every
word President Reagan spoke. "President Reagan's on!!!
Don't change that channel!!!"  Thank you again.
Danny 



Reagan  Remembered
> Months Before the Ex-President's Death, His Daughter
> Shared  Memories
> 
> By Patti Davis, People
> 
> What was once my father's office  is now his
> bedroom. On top of the desk 
> where he rested his elbows as sunlight  slanted
> through the window, where he wrote 
> his last letter to America announcing  that he had
> Alzheimer's in 1994, 
> bedsheets are often stacked – ready to be used 
> for a change of the hospital bed 
> where he now stays around the clock. When he is 
> awake, which is not that often, 
> he can gaze at the trees outside the window. The 
> other day, my mother and 
> the nurse who was on duty moved the bed to the open 
> doorway so he could look 
> into the back garden, where the sun was making
> prisms  on the leaves after a 
> morning of rain. "Did he seem to notice the
> different  view?" I asked my mother. 
> "I don't know," she said.
> People often ask me how  my father is doing. They
> want to know if he still 
> recognizes me, if he still  recognizes any of us. It
> makes me realize that my 
> mother and I have been so  protective of his
> condition since he became ill – 
> almost a decade now – that it  has allowed people
> to imagine he is still talking, 
> still walking, still able to  stumble into a moment
> of clarity. But it would 
> be a disservice to every family  who has an
> Alzheimer's victim in their 
> embrace to say any of that is true, and I  don't
> believe my father would want us to 
> lie. Today, we are like many other  families who
> come to the bedside of a 
> loved one and look into eyes that no  longer flicker
> with recognition. It 
> rearranges your universe. It strips away  everything
> but the most important truth: 
> that the soul is alive, even if the  mind is
> faltering.
> My father is the only man in the house these days,
> except  for members of his 
> Secret Service detail who occasionally come in. It's
> a house  of women, now – 
> the nurses, my mother, the housekeepers. Me, when I
> am there,  which is 
> often, since I live only 10 minutes away. When my
> brother Ron visits  from Seattle, 
> or our older brother Michael comes over, the sound
> of a male voice  seems to 
> register with my father. He lifts his eyebrows. Is
> it recognition of  his 
> sons? Curiosity about this new male intruder? I
> don't know. We frequently  arrange 
> dinner around his bed. In fact, it has become the
> center of the house.  
> Everything radiates from that space, whether he is
> awake or asleep. It radiates  
> from the man whose life is thinning to a stream, yet
> flows and follows us even  
> when we drive off the property.
> In the room next to my father's, my mother  now
> sleeps in a new bed. The 
> king-size bed they shared for so many years came to 
> feel vast and empty to her, 
> so she had it taken away and replaced by a 
> queen-size bed. Less empty space 
> across the mattress. Yet it's no relief from  the
> loneliness of sleeping alone 
> after 50 years of rolling over to the person  you
> love. She still tiptoes 
> across the floor if she gets up in the middle of the
>  night; her heart forgets that 
> the other side of the bed is empty. I remember the 
> day the larger bed was 
> replaced. I remember the mark on the carpet where
> the  king-size bed once was. 
> It seemed to say everything.
> Alzheimer's is a long  series of I-don't-knows. My
> father's doctor doesn't 
> know how he has lived so  long with this disease,
> especially after breaking his 
> hip in January 2001. I  think it's the tenacity of
> his soul – he just isn't 
> ready to leave his reunited  family. At a certain
> point in time, it might all 
> come down to this – life is  about learning how to
> die, how to let go and how to 
> hold on to what is really  important. One thing that
> was so startling about 
> the TV movie that has gotten so  much publicity is
> that it was based on years 
> of our lives when my mother and I  were often at
> war. The script made use of 
> things I had written at that time,  before I was
> able to put my rebelliousness 
> and political stridency aside. After  reading the
> script, she said to me, "I'm 
> so sorry about the way you were  portrayed." I think
> I answered, "Well, we all 
> came off terribly." But the moment  was not lost on
> me. A single sentence can 
> be a bridge over currents of old  history.
> My father will leave, we all know that. There will
> be many people  poring 
> over his political career. There will be debates and
> discussions about  his 
> Presidency. But as a family, we will be elsewhere.
> We will walk past an  empty 
> room. We will be assaulted by the silence, the
> emptiness, and we will, I  think, 
> try hard to listen – to echoes, whispers, all
> those things that don't  vanish 
> when a person dies. That is, if you believe in such
> things. My father  did. And 
> that might be his most important legacy for us –
> what lives on in the  heart.
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Walt  Davies
> Cooper Hollow Farm
> Monmouth, OR 97361
> 503 623-0460  
> 
> 
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