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I was writing a post on Studs Terkel in my head, on my way to a meeting Saturday morning, when my Mom called to tell me that my Aunt Camilla had passed. And this afternoon, I was just getting wound up to write about Terkel again when I read this:
Madelyn Dunham, the grandmother who was the anchor in the life of the child that was Barack Obama, died today just hours before polling stations opened in America’s historic election.
“It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer,” Obama said in a joint statement with his sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng.
“She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength and humility.”
Dunham, 86, had been in poor health for the duration of Obama’s campaign – though he has often said that she followed politics avidly.
…
In his memoir, Obama credited Dunham for giving him the stability he might otherwise have lacked, being raised without a father and by a mother who travelled between Hawaii and Indonesia.He returned from Indonesia to live with his grandparents when he was 10, and Dunham enrolled him in the exclusive Punahou school in Hawaii.
…
Dunham’s death leaves Obama with only one remaining link to his childhood in his younger sister, Maya, who lives in Hawaii.
It breaks my heart that she did not live to see her grandson elected President. But then, I’m sure that accomplishment was far less important to Mrs. Dunham than that she saw Barack Obama grow up to be a mensch.
So many friends and relatives are reaching the age when the time ahead must be counted in months or years instead of decades: my in-laws have just reached 70, a mark my parents will both soon reach (and that only 2 of my 4 grandparents ever saw); one uncle was diagnosed with terminal cancer last month, just weeks before his 75th birthday; other older relatives are dealing with various cancers or have challenges ranging from coronary disease to diabetes. My dear friend Ella, at 82, is frank in her desire to come to the end of a road that has left her unable to see or hear clearly – leaving her without the comfort of television, radio or books to distract her from chronic pain; she cannot walk without fear of falling, and she lacks sufficient motor control to correspond with those she loves.
In my selfishness, I want Ella around as long as possible, as I wished Aunt Camilla would be here to keep the thread to my beloved grandfather, her brother, unbroken.
But that’s the bitch of being an atheist: I can’t easily let my loved ones fall away, knowing I will see them on some cloud perch when my time has finally come. But still, I have to let them go.
And while November 4th will mean a new chance for our towns and states and country and even the world if we make the right choices and follow those choices with action, it will also be a day that Camilla and Studs and Madelyn Dunham did not live to see; they had other pivotal moments, and saw whether their generation made the most of its opportunities for equality, justice and peace.
I wonder, looking back, what tomorrow will mean to me 40 years from now, and how I will see it differently from our son L. and his cousins, and from our grandchildren.