I have vivid recall of the day John Kennedy was assasinated. I was in first grade when the news was announced over the intercom and our teachers openly wept while a class of six year olds sat confused and silent. My brothers and I were sent home early from school and we walked into the house to a stunned mom and my visiting grandparents and aunt glued to the television. A somber Walter Cronkite gave updates in black and white and my mom sent us off to play rather than subject us to what nobody could fathom. A few days later the funeral of a president was televised and our house was blanketed in sorrow.
Politics weren’t a nightly subject in our house but the importance of voting was always passed down to us and now to our kids. The thought of skipping an election was never a consideration and if you dared to think you had a valid reason you’d better not tell anyone. My dad would tell us that if you reaped the benefits from a fire department, a paved road, and streetlights then you were required to vote and pay your taxes.
I am a political junkie but with this administration I often have to remind myself to unclench my teeth, relax my shoulders, and breathe. Other times I have to stop myself from flinging my phone against the wall after reading another ridiculous headline.
Mark had a tendency to hyper-react to political news – often worried that the NIH was going to be handcuffed and that his research funding was going to be ripped away. He’d be livid about something we were watching and to him it probably seemed like I was under reacting but until I understood what was going on I tended to remain steady. I was always the calm in his storms. There were many stormy moments in his head and heart but none more than whenever his mom came to visit. He would be on a hair trigger – reacting to everything she said with an anger he never showed anyone else. When this would happen I would try to smooth things over and keep the peace with both of them. In different ways and for different reasons it was exhausting for both of us.
It took his death and a lot of therapy to understand that this was the result of childhood trauma. That the home and life we created was the safest place he had ever known and any threat to that was a threat to him and his family. Of course he never knew this about himself, and for me, understanding these things after the fact are painful.
What I know from what I witnessed and have since lived is that chaos shakes the earth beneath your feet. Even when you’re away from it you don’t trust that everything is calm. Years later you remain on high alert waiting for the shoe to drop, a dark closet, or for the unspeakable to roar back to life.
I think about Mark and Vicki and how both their lives ended, how they spent decades giving to and nurturing college students, how they went to bat for their programs and those intrusted to their care. On his last day Mark was unable to stand up for his own life because despite the love and admiration of us, of colleagues, friends, and family he never could shake the thought that he was a bad boy.
I feel that every day. I also can see that in the midst of this daily chaos we are living, where children are being taken from their homes, is the photo of these two smiling back at me. These two who desperately tried every day of their adult lives to get the ground to stop shaking.
I am more than willing to go a few rounds for both of them.
