So This Is Christmas...
Interesting how a song from 37 years ago can still apply so well to the sentiments of today.
One of the many bits of wisdom that my grandmother has passed on to me comes to mind.
It's 2008, she is 87 years old and to this day, she hates the sight of the mail man. It's nothing personal against the lovely workers of the United States Postal Service. It's just that she remembers the draft notices coming in the mail, first for her husband and brother during WWII, then later for her son and son-in-law for Vietnam. If the draft had remained in effect, her grandson would have been drafted just in time for Desert Storm, her grand son-in-law for the current wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though the poor postman or postwoman is only the middleman, they were the face she could attach to the letter and the government who was trying to take away her family. She wants to know why the United States needs to participate in a war every 20 years. She has asked if the governments of the world agree to cull the herd once per generation? She's not stupid. She understands that there is money to be made. She just doesn't understand how people can still sit there and try to balance out profit margins with the number of dead and injured people. Hours after the attacks on 9/11/01 she said to me "There will be a war now." She said this with a mournful certainty that I will never forget. She is right, every 20-25 years...a war for each generation.
In speaking with her now, she understands that the war we're in isn't something we can just cut off and end. There is no V Day celebration with confetti and tickertape and handsome sailors kissing pretty nurses. She hopes though, that with the new people taking the reigns in 2009, that we can get ourselves out of the mess. She made another comment though, the other day on the phone, that struck me. She said that at least all of those men and women in the military have jobs right now. What waits for them when they come home? I don't know. My grandmother asks good questions.
I wanted to thank all of you who sent your get well wishes and mojo. My grandmother is doing well. She went out yesterday for the first time since her hospital stay. She wanted a burger. *grin* As some of you on my friends list have met her and the rest have read about her at some point on either LJ or Brunchma, while I was decorating her Christmas tree I mentioned to her that she even had crazy internet people wishing her well. That made her smile (and ask how some of you that she recalls are doing...JohnnyC, Bookwyrm and "that gorgeous little one"). She said to say thank you. We were listening to a CD I had made her ages ago of different artists and songs that are all pretty much sung in Italian. I think it makes her feel better to hear her first language sometimes, now that everyone who could speak with her fluently is gone.
She has the highest of hopes for your futures, wishes all of you a merry Christmas and likes a part in the song The Prayer (though she's not incredibly fond of Celine Dion)...and I told her I would post it. I'm sure many of you have heard it before.
Sogniamo un mondo senza piu violenza,
un mondo di giustizia e di speranza.
Ognuno dia una mano al suo vicino,
simbolo di pace...di fraternita.