In Honor of My Mother and the Power of Love
From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012308A.shtml
Wednesday 23 January 2008
The last time my mother was in a hospital, an essay by Thich Nhat Hanh moved in front of my eyes. "Our mother is the
teacher who first teaches us love, the most important subject in life," he wrote. "Without my mother I could never have
known how to love. Thanks to her I can love my neighbors. Thanks to her I can love all living beings. Through her I
acquired my first notions of understanding and compassion."
My mother, Miriam A. Solomon, died on January 20, which happened to be the seventh anniversary of the inauguration of a
man and a presidential regime that she loathed. Once, several years ago, when I referred to George W. Bush as "an
idiot," she made a correction by pointing out he's much worse than that; she used the adjective "evil."
At my parents' apartment, taped on the front door for a long time, a little poster said: "The America I Believe In
Doesn't Torture People." The poster was from Amnesty International USA - an organization my mom wrote many protest
letters to dictators for - and it summed up her devotion to human decency rather than counterfeit versions of American
democracy.
On Monday, the day after my mom died, The Washington Post that arrived on the apartment doorstep carried a lead
editorial under the headline "Martin Luther King Jr.: His Words Are More Relevant Than Ever This Election Year." But the
editorial did not include the word "war" - even while it grandly commented on "the vision of Dr. King" and, of course,
quoted from his "I Have a Dream" speech.
My mother was among the hundreds of thousands of civil rights supporters who gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial
and heard King's speech that day in 1963. But unlike the Post's editorial writers, she did not suffer from arrested
development in subsequent decades.
She shared in King's expansive view of essential struggles for human rights during the last few years of his life. And
in the decades that followed, she took to heart his denunciations of economic injustice and what he called "the madness
of militarism."
In contrast to The Washington Post - with its fevered editorial support for the war in Vietnam and, a third of a
century later, the war in Iraq - my mother was a humanist who cared about human life far more than geopolitical
positioning. In October 1967, then a 46-year-old mother of four children, she joined in the large antiwar march to the
Pentagon.
She was passionate about the Bill of Rights. In the early 1970s she did extensive volunteer work for the ACLU in
defense of the civil liberties of antiwar demonstrators. And for decades, she worked to get progressive Democrats
elected to office. She was never in the limelight, and she never sought it.
Sometimes she'd tell me about her father, Abe Abramowitz, a socialist who did tireless political work in Brooklyn. As a
girl, she went with him to branch meetings of The Workmen's Circle, where social justice was on the agenda. Once, she
showed me how he showed her how to quickly seal a lot of envelopes by wetting many flaps all at once with a sponge.
Along the way, he supported Norman Thomas for president; later on, as circumstances and possibilities shifted, he opted
for Franklin Roosevelt.
My mom adored her father, who had a sparkling sense of humor, a love of literature, and - most of all - an overflow of
humanistic kindness. He died young, when she was only in her mid-thirties. It must have been a terrible blow to my
mother.
My mother did not die young (she was 86), but since then I've felt awful waves of sadness. And sometimes, I think of
people who are mourning loved ones of all ages, due to distinctly unnatural causes. The people dying in Iraq as a
consequence of the US war effort. The children in so many countries who lose their lives to the ravages of poverty. The
health care system in the United States that - in the absence of full medical coverage for everyone as a human right -
means avoidable death and suffering on a large scale.
In media-speak and political discourse, the human toll of corporate domination and the warfare state is routinely
abstract. But the results - in true human terms - add rage and more grief on top of grief.
Our own mourning should help us understand and strive to prevent the unspeakable pain of others. And whatever love we
have for one person, we should try to apply to the world. I won't ever be able to talk with my mother again, but I'm
sure that she would agree.
After my mother died, I learned about a poem that she wrote long ago - apparently soon after her father passed away.
The poem is titled "Bereavement." Here is how it ends:
More than cherished memories are left behind; they leave us - us to know our duties and our powers and to carry on
without much fuss.
In the crushing grief of the moment, we think of how vital and good our loved ones were, and vow to be worthy of them.
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Norman Solomon is a columnist and author. His web site is www.normansolomon.com.