OPINION: Engendering passion in our political climate
I thought about the night she died and I wondered if there was anyone else thinking of her, too.
She had big peppered gray hair and a crooked nose. Her clothes always fit too big, probably because they were never really hers. Wherever she was headed her deep raspy voice boomed, “Hellooo,” announcing her presence. She shuffled more than she actually walked, always leading with her hunched back as if her legs couldn’t keep up with her own body.
She was pleasant at the beginning of all our conversations, but every conversation led into her calling someone a f-ng bastard and a f-ing asshole and that motherf-er how she wanted to f-ing murder that person and then she would throw punches in the air to illustrate such and the sound of her fist impacting the palm of her other hand sometimes startled me. Then all her rage would finally give way to tears that cascaded into streams falling from her tired eyes. I never knew what I could say that would even help to undo all the abuse and torment from so many years prior, all the years that led her to be sitting there before me.