The End of the year as it looks from my perch on Mount Trexlertown

I am one of those people who thinks it is absurd to use the last week of the calendar year as a reason to make a list of who died in the last 12 months and review it. It IS important to remember those no longer in our personal lives, but I did not see any celebrity as a particularly great loss.

In the Post "John and Kate" world, I think our culture has lost a piece of our collective soul by valuing such idiocy as relevant. I think we should be more concerned with improving the lives of those in our immediate community than following the lives of such starved for attention media whores like John and Kate and the balloon boys' parents.

We have truly become an ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) culture, we are unable to pay attention to the things we should for more than 5 seconds, before becoming distracted by news that some famous person was a) arrested, b) cheating on their spouse, c) trying to adopt a kid from a foreign country, or d) running for elected office, despite having nothing more than a pretty face.

Is it the End of the year, the end of civilization, or both?

What is really bothering me is that last Monday one of my relatives, Kenneth Casey died. We were both born at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. We were born eleven days apart, and like me, he just turned 48.

Last summer he was diagnosed with an inoperable Esophageal cancer. He went through the whole schedule of radiation treatments, and when he returned to the doctor in September, they told him he had a month left. In November they told him two weeks. He was in Hospice for the last month, and on Morphine during that time as well. He had slipped into a coma over the last weekend, and God in his mercy did not bring him out.
I didn't find out Kenneth was sick until my Uncle called me to tell me that he died, and make me aware of the service to be held on Saturday January ninth.

Kenneth Casey died at home with his daughter and grandchild nearby. Nothing makes you more aware of your mortality than the death of a family member close to your own age. He was the youngest of eleven children and the first of them to die.

I wept for him Tuesday night as I digested the news. Lately I have found reason to cry regularly. I find myself tearing up at the sight of military families as they stand beside the casket of their loved returning from overseas a final time. I cried as the vet gave Ethel an injection that ended her misery after a stroke.

I also cringe in anger as ideologues in government bicker over semantics as millions of Americans can't afford to both eat or pay for medicine that would improve the quality of their life or lengthen it. That doesn't make me cry, but it makes me angry.

It is absolutely mind boggling to me that I can take my terminally ill pet to a vet and end her misery. Yet for some reason a human being enduring horrific pain and near lethal levels of morphine to manage that pain is not allowed to ask for the same humane treatment. When we do it for a family pet, it is humane, but when we ask for it concerning a beloved family member, it is considered murder. Thank God that we are allowed to file DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) orders.

For the life of me, I can't understand why some ideologues insist on inflicting their religious beliefs on everybody else. One of the base tenets of all known religions is Mercy. Many of the so called great preachers of our time love to cite MERCY when it suits their purpose. Maybe in 2010 they will discover a new use for MERCY, but I doubt it. They have squandered their soul decrying the virtue less lives of those on reality TV, instead of addressing the real needs of those suffering in the real world.