My mother was a proud FDR Democrat and preached it at home. My father’s family grew up quiet Republicans, transplanted to Detroit from St. Louis. We never got him to admit who he voted for in 1960, but he became more liberal as he aged.

I was not quite four years old during the 1956 election, but my older brother and I held a mock election. We carefully laid out a ballot for each state (I’m sure my brother, then almost nine, did all this, since I couldn’t write yet), marked a vote for each state and tallied the score. In our household, Adlai Stephenson won. We quite admired the erudite senator from our neighboring state.

I was unabashedly in love with JFK. I watched his inaugural address on my lunch break (we still came home for lunch from elementary school), sitting on the arm of our sofa on the black and white TV in our den. I have the Life magazine with the Kennedy’s motorcade on the cover and his speech inside. They were the epitome of elegance and grace as far as I was concerned, and his death, three years later, just shattered me.

On June 6, 1968, my clock radio awoke me with the news of RFK’s assassination and I lay under the covers, weeping. My mother came to see why I hadn’t gotten up. I muttered, “They got Bobby too”. I was in high school, too young to vote, caught up in my own life, paying attention to world affairs, but not politics, per se.

I attended Brandeis University, a hotbed of liberal politics. A year before I arrived, it had been the headquarters for the Student National Strike Center, when campuses across the country went out on strike to protest the U.S.’ bombing of Cambodia. A few months earlier, four students at Kent State were gunned down by the National Guard. Mine was a closely-screened in-coming class. Yet, a few weeks after I arrived, Brandeis again made news, as three of their students landed on the FBI 10 Most Wanted List for robbing a local bank which resulted in the murder of a police officer. Years later I would sit next to one of those students at an event on campus. She was now out of prison. She had repented of her ways and was seeking reconciliation. We had a short, but fascinating talk. Google Katherine Ann Power.

I was never politically engaged in that way. At my Northwestern interview, the recruiter kept asking me if I would burn my bra. I was interested in their Theater Department. After graduating high school, I did stop wearing a bra, but was mocked by my roommate for continuing to wear mascara.

I found my political identity at the end of freshman year, in 1971. Always a liberal and interested in social justice, this was before the Supreme Court had passed Roe v. Wade and I came home to Michigan late for my period. Very late. My father saw how gloomy I was and we took the dog out for a walk one night. I confessed what was ailing me and that I didn’t know how to handle it. At the time, abortion was legal only in New York and New Mexico. I told him I thought of suicide. He chided me. He told me to see his golf partner who happened to be an OB/GYN. If the news was bad, he would try to get me a therapeutic abortion in Michigan. If he couldn’t, he would take me to New York. All this went on without my mother’s knowledge. I had first obtained birth control at a Planned Parenthood office while visiting a friend in NYC over intersession the previous Feburary, but nothing is fool-proof.

The  pregnancy test was negative and the doctor gave me a shot of progesterone to bring on my period, but he also discovered that I had a class III Pap smear (pre-cancerous) at the age of 18, and did a simple procedure a few weeks later to clear that up. Days later, I slipped my father a note when my period arrived. I found it in his papers when he died. My father was one of the all-time good guys.

But my passion for a woman’s right to choose, and access to health care was born that summer. I will ALWAYS vote for those who stand up for that cause.

My first vote was cast for McGovern in 1972. Though I was voting absentee at college from Michigan, I was proud to be in Massachusetts, the one state that went for McGovern. I have never voted for a Republican and cannot imagine a scenario when I would. Their party values are abhorrent to me.

This election season has been particularly troubling, watching the Orange Monster, a man who proudly disrespects women, minorities and other disenfranchised groups, get away with outright lies on national TV and his followers just don’t care, or are completely ignorant. I understand they also may be voting one issue, but how can they vote to put that man in charge of this country? There is no sense of decency, social justice, understanding of the issues. Only rage. It frightens me to my very core. Having lost relatives in the Holocaust, this reminds me too much of 1930s Germany.

My first experience with death was my grandfather’s, when I was eleven years old. Both of my maternal grandparents (Nana and Papa) lived with us in our big brick house in New Jersey, and had for as long as I can remember — possibly since before I was born. My grandmother had one of the four bedrooms on the second floor. My grandfather, for reasons unknown to me, lived in the finished bedroom up in the attic for many years. After he had his first heart attack, we turned the den on the first floor into his bedroom, adding an accordion-pleat door, because he could no longer manage the two flights of stairs to the attic.

I loved my grandfather more than anyone else in the world, even more than my mother. He was kind, and patient, and so loving. He never criticized, and was interested in everything. He told fascinating stories about “the old country” and of his escape over the border in the bottom of a wagon, covered with hay. I always thought I was his favorite grandchild. Many years later I discovered that every one of his five granddaughters believed herself to be his favorite. That just shows how amazing he was, that he could make each girl think he loved her the best — although of course I am sure that the other four were mistaken and I was the real favorite!

Papa used to make breakfast for me every weekday morning while my mother slept in. On rainy or snowy days, or if I was going to be late, he would drive me to my elementary school. which was about half a mile away. Right after I turned eleven I started seventh grade at a six-year high school which was in another town, and carpooled with the one other girl from my town who went to that school. Her mother drove us in the morning, and my mother picked us up in the afternoon. Papa still made breakfast for me, and then walked out to the curb with me to wait for my ride.

One morning we were standing at the curb, as usual. I think we were holding hands. Suddenly, I felt a jerk on my hand and turned to see Papa falling to the ground. I didn’t know what he was doing. I wondered if it was some kind of joke, but it wasn’t funny. I said, “Papa, Papa, get up, what are you doing?” but there was no response. I wanted to run inside to wake up my parents, but I didn’t want to leave him there alone on the sidewalk. I stood there, frantic. Then my ride arrived and pulled into the driveway. I pointed to Papa and said to them, “wait here, I’ll be right back.” I tore into the house, screaming for my parents. My father, who was a doctor, grabbed his medical bag and went outside with me, then told me to go to school, everything would be okay. So I went to school. At lunchtime, I called home from the pay phone at school, and my father answered, which was surprising. (What was he doing home?) I asked “how’s Papa?” He replied “Who is this?” That was even more surprising. I said “It’s Suzy!” He said “Papa’s doing as well as can be expected.”

When I got home after school, I learned that Papa had died. I never got to see him to say goodbye. I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral. I don’t even know where he is buried. And I was haunted for years about that couple of minutes between the time he fell down and the time my ride arrived for school. If I had run to get my father sooner, would that have made the difference? My father reassured me that it would not have, but I didn’t know whether to believe him or not.

I still miss him.

Oh, those candies with the toxic red dyes!
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I suppose you could say any number of those events was a type of death ... but the death of Great-Grandpa was the first time being aware that a human being who had been in my life would no longer be there.
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They were set aside as my Cemetery Shoes.
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...the woman ascending has never visited the devil.
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