Tuesday, August 17, 2004
A Reflection:
In response to this post from andante, I wanted to post my reply here for all to read.
andante--The memory loss is such a tough thing to watch. I saw my grandfather go through similar with Parkinsons for almost 5 years before he died earlier this year. It is really sad.
But in a really strange way (am I getting metaphysical here?), his memory loss made it all the more important for me to pick up some of the things he found most important.
For example, he was a fanatical HAM operator, and though I've been an Internet junkie since my first BBS in 1989, I didn't really use it to communicate, just mostly for information and, you know, the usual...(cough) porn (cough)....But now, especially over the past year or so, I've gotten heavily into networking and communicating with lots of people, much like his HAM connection.
Also, he was a diehard Democrat. As a kid, I can remember his rants against Reagan and Iran-Contra. Didn't mean anything to me at the time, but for some reason, as I matured and his memory problems got worse, I began to find politics addicting. I saw why he got so upset over the way things were run. He influenced my views on health care, and especially on pro-worker, pro-union priorities since he was a perfect example of someone who worked hard and retired with a good pension. The way the union-labor relationship was meant to work.
He also loved wine. It was his passion, and over the past couple of years, I've developed quite a passion for red wine.
Could it be a coincidence? Maybe a simple personal desire of mine which already favored those things? Or is it something more? I'd generally put my religious tenor somewhere between agnostic and atheist. I believe that even if morals are human-created and not deity-mandated, this fact does not give them less power or consequence. That said, what I may have experienced is that nexus region between timelessness and immediacy as my grandfather slowly lost his faculties and I somehow matured my own...
Something to chew on, anyway...
andante--The memory loss is such a tough thing to watch. I saw my grandfather go through similar with Parkinsons for almost 5 years before he died earlier this year. It is really sad.
But in a really strange way (am I getting metaphysical here?), his memory loss made it all the more important for me to pick up some of the things he found most important.
For example, he was a fanatical HAM operator, and though I've been an Internet junkie since my first BBS in 1989, I didn't really use it to communicate, just mostly for information and, you know, the usual...(cough) porn (cough)....But now, especially over the past year or so, I've gotten heavily into networking and communicating with lots of people, much like his HAM connection.
Also, he was a diehard Democrat. As a kid, I can remember his rants against Reagan and Iran-Contra. Didn't mean anything to me at the time, but for some reason, as I matured and his memory problems got worse, I began to find politics addicting. I saw why he got so upset over the way things were run. He influenced my views on health care, and especially on pro-worker, pro-union priorities since he was a perfect example of someone who worked hard and retired with a good pension. The way the union-labor relationship was meant to work.
He also loved wine. It was his passion, and over the past couple of years, I've developed quite a passion for red wine.
Could it be a coincidence? Maybe a simple personal desire of mine which already favored those things? Or is it something more? I'd generally put my religious tenor somewhere between agnostic and atheist. I believe that even if morals are human-created and not deity-mandated, this fact does not give them less power or consequence. That said, what I may have experienced is that nexus region between timelessness and immediacy as my grandfather slowly lost his faculties and I somehow matured my own...
Something to chew on, anyway...
