[AT] Reagan Remembered (by Patti Davis) Off topic but greatreading
Frank
gremaux at tein.net
Mon Jun 7 16:24:56 PDT 2004
you might have liked him but he did me no favors on my social security
maybe this is not the place for politics
Frank
gremaux at tein.net
Central Montana
www.angelfire.com/mt/deeregp/index.html
----- Original Message -----
From: "Danny Tabor" <dannytabor2000 at yahoo.com>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Monday, June 07, 2004 12:20 PM
Subject: Re: [AT] Reagan Remembered (by Patti Davis) Off topic but
greatreading
>
> --- 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 â?" 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 â?"
> > almost a decade now â?" 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 â?"
> > 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 â?" he just isn't
> > ready to leave his reunited family. At a certain
> > point in time, it might all
> > come down to this â?" 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 â?" 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 â?"
> > what lives on in the heart.
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Walt Davies
> > Cooper Hollow Farm
> > Monmouth, OR 97361
> > 503 623-0460
> >
> >
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