Does Death Become Us?

Burying your parents is quite an undertaking, and it is important.  Family values, like many core moral and ethical postulates in America, have been devalued.  I'll never forget when our next door neighbor, Cassandra Vallery, came over at dinner time and was amazed to see our family sitting around the table eating together.  For many people the ritual of eating together is paramount to good family relations.  Many notable authors and scholars laud the effort of eating together at the dinner table.  Covid 19 changed everything.  This single event, the outbreak of a murderous pathogen, changed the world forever.  Buying online, remote learning, and Uber eats are very beneficial to specific parties.  Can you guess who?  CSX Corp., the major east coast north south railroad posted record profits in the first quarter of 2026 to the tune of more than three billion dollars.  How can a railroad doing the same things they always have done be profiting so much?  If you go trainspotting like many railfans do in earnest, you quickly will discover the majority of what CSX is carrying these days.  Can you guess what?  Because of the combination of internet commerce and the long term influences of having sheltered in place, we have lost many of our traditional American customs.  As the Trump bubble begins to burst, and it is with diesel at six dollars a gallon, slowly reality is returning to Americans along with the stark realization that there is little money flowing in middle and lower classes.  The rich continue to get richer and richer, and because there is little left in the American landscape to rape and pillage, Trump's organization turned their eyes on government and the American people's money.  The once familiar and effective economy of making ends meet with grassroots services like dining and entertainment, have been replaced with huge Ponzi like schemes to amass huge quick fortunes.  These types of fortunes were made during the "Big Short," the financial crisis of 2008.  When Bill Clinton was running for President, one of his campaign promises was that every American should be able to own their on home.  He got elected, so there was merit to that forethought.  Ironically how that promise got translated was into unvetted high interest mortgages, which average Americans proceeded to buy into for homes they could not afford.  Unbeknownst to them these mortgages purposely had clauses written into them that would change the American economy forever.  During 2008 this manipulation came to fruition, and millions of people defaulted on their loans, because the terms were not disclosed to the buyers at signing.  In short their mortgage payments doubled and tripled, and they could not pay.  A handful of Wall Street investors knew what was coming and invested in newly penned financial instruments betting against the American economy.  Of course they won, and the Troubled Assets Relief Fund was born from the pen of George W. Bush.  The TARP money, as it was called, bailed out the auto industry, reputable Wall Street banks and financial institutions that failed, and more.  Billions of dollars disappeared overnight as the stock market crashed again, but Hank Paulson implored the administration not to let that happen.  It would make America lose faith in our own economy.  In two payments, one from President Bush, and one from newly elected President Barack Obama, billions of dollars of tax payer dollars went to pay off these players.  Not only did the failed institutions get money to rebuild, the handful of investors on Wall Street were paid off for their grandiose and treasonous gamble.  This is when America's money disappeared, and to this day it sits in Swiss and Grand Cayman banks not flowing in the common American economy.  Economies will not function unless money is flowing.  That means people need to earn money, and they need to spend it.  It means that everyone has to pay their fair share of taxes like they did before Ronald Reagan became President.  If we should remember anything he did, it was to reduce the seventy percent tax rate on the rich.  This one event single-handedly created Yuppies, young and upwardly mobile Wall Street types, of which our President was the pentacle.  Trickle down economics worked for a while, as these entrepreneurs invested heavily back into their businesses.  Inflation was high, but products were quality and competition was healthy.  I never will forget when Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville, North Carolina was decorated for Christmas.  Christmas shopping was like a fantasy, and American products, goods, and services were at their height.  Many cast the 1980's as self-indulgent and excessive, but having grown up in this era, fondly I remember the symbolism of the gifts that became a part of our American lives.  Although some may be reluctant to admit it now in 2026 and with the ever increasing acceptance of alternative lifestyles and sexuality, romance was a large determinate of these products.  They fueled courtship, eventual family relationships, children, and retirement.  I stopped working playing piano on cruise ships to return home and aid my parents in their later years.  It became a full time job for me after my father's passing, and I became a full time caregiver for my mother, who made it to the ripe age of almost 93.  In return I was given the family home.  After the upcoming two year anniversary of my mother's death on November 11, 2024, a two year journey of executorship, the coursework of this advanced degree, almost is finished.  Very much like my doctoral coursework for a degree in music composition, and "All But Dissertation," life and music become a strange ever evolving continuation of life and study.  There is no final document.  I may have signed the probate document closing my mother's estate, but her and my lives continue.  As your mother she never will die, and as native Americans and many other indigenous peoples do, they commune with their elders in a spiritual and ritual ceremony passing on the knowledge of previous generations.  My mother and father still speak to me, and I listen.