My parents, my nation

A curiously symbolic day.

Today, I closed down the two remaining bank accounts that had been in my parents’ name. There wasn’t much in them, actually. We had transferred the bulk of the funds long before. But we had to keep those accounts open to deal with a few outstanding expenses, and a few incoming checks, that were in their names.

I realized that...well, this is hard to explain...but somehow, it was the final act for them. It was the last of their business. It was the moment that they were genuinely gone. They exist no longer now even as a legal fiction...as names on pre-printed checks.

It makes me sad, of course. Though, also, it is fitting, for they were of the “greatest generation.” They were not old enough to fight in World War II, but they participated in it on the home front. And, afterwards, my father served on shipboard during the Korean conflict. Then, both of them were involved in that great labor which made America the wealthiest nation in the world.

And now they’re gone.

Gone on the very same day the Electoral College confirmed Donald Trump in his presidency. Gone, indeed, on the same day that Liberalism died in America, and the New  Deal was finally euthanized by billionaires and plutocrats. Gone on the day that so many of the things which they valued and fought for...came to an end.

And I think it is in fact an end. A transition. Today, we ended our great experiment with the Enlightenment tradition. Perhaps, forever. Or, if we are lucky, then maybe we, as a culture and a nation, may some day return to democracy, and reason, and science, and compassion. But I very much fear it will not be as the same nation we were before...not the United States we knew.

And I fear, too, that that future nation, that coming America, whatever it is called, ...will not be quite so great nor entirely so wise as the one constructed by people like my parents...built by their labors...and then abandoned with such ease and eagerness...by  those who are truly, and fundamentally unworthy...

To be their heirs.

In memoriam...Mom and Dad.