This is how it happened

In the last few years I made sure to be near Burt as much as possible. He retired and we spent many hours together. We took short excursions. I didn’t care. When you love someone, it doesn’t matter if your’re invited to the “hot” social occasions and the opera and the ballet, and you know what I’m talking about.

I enjoyed being with him because we had the most enlightening conversations. Having been born in 1929, the year of the “Great Depression,” he had seem “everything.” He knew politicians inside and out. He could make predictions on their next moves. His opinion of most of them was very low. I mean, come on, most of them have never worked in their lives. They’re takers. Look at their soft hands. No work. Ever. 

I’m afraid it’s come to the point where politicians run for office simply  because they get free money if they follow instructions. If not—-well, they get the boot.

President Obama, who I do admire, did say this week that the worst was still coming. Guess what it is? Do you know? We are a consumer economy, almost entirely on all of us, men and women purchasing stuff constantly. Maybe that’s why it’s not made very well! 

Tell me this: how can people pay off their credit cards if they are not working and cannot pay their mortgages? What’s going to happen when all those people default on their credit card payments?

But that revelation was not the intention of this piece: I wanted to tell you what happened to my Burt. He fell twice two months ago, once at the harbor, the second time in the ER. In the Emergency Room. It was surreal. That second fall cause his head to open and blood poured out just like you see on “law and Order. It was one of the rare times I wasn’t with him at the harbor. He actually drove home! He did not tell him that he already needed stitches and was his skin was ripped off. I took him immediately to the ER over the hill where, because of their triage technique, he was left to fall on the floor and break his head again.

Minutes passed before his fall registered with staff. I was already on the floor with Burt calling for help. It came but it was delayed. A lady who was waited screamed but she screamed too late—the event had already taken place. Two falls. One day. I was standing right next to him when he fell the second time. And now that bloody memory is embedded in my mind.