Seven months after my mother passed away my father, my sister, my brother-in-law and the pastor of my parents’ church gave proper rest to my mother’s remains in the place that will hold her ashes until the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and at which time God will resurrect us in body and soul to join him in paradise. This was almost 7 months to the date. Although I was not there for her passing, her funeral or her burial I know that the small ceremony of final farewell was full of emotion, just like it had been at the time of her home going.
Although it has been, as I mentioned earlier, seven months since her death I still feel at times as if she has never left. I think that she is still at the hospital. Many times when I talk with my father over the computer, and he walks away from the camera I feel as if I can see her walking down the hallway, coming out of the kitchen or the bathroom.  At times although I cannot see her I feel her presence, her warmth, her love, always giving me strength and reassurance. I think about her every day, and many times that is all that I think about. I see her in my mind laying on the hospital bed.
My mother was a pessimist but she had love, and she would always find a way of sharing it.
My father, during my childhood was not a loving father, as he had come from a home where love was not present, but my mother would make him feel loved, and I think that is what he can take with him for the rest of his days. For those of us who were fortunate enough to have shared part of her path on this world we can also take her love with us.
My mother fully understood the meaning of the words of the Apostle Paul in the 1^st letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13 as she had lived it through my grandparents and their love to each other:

13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The past few months have not been easy for me, I cannot say that I am still mourning, even though that is what my therapist calls it, but what I feel is that her passing has knocked me off my rails, it’s like I have lost my path, I feel many times like a ship without a helm, simply going in circles without being able to move forward or with any direction.

I recently watched a movie called The Descendants in which the wife has suffered an accident that has left her brain dead. The husband is told by doctors that there is nothing they can do and that the proper thing to consider is disconnecting her. He has two daughters, and the process of saying goodbye is very painful. I am conscious that I did not go through those motions like this family does in the movie, but being at 5000 miles does not alleviate the pain, the sorrow, the loss and the vacuum of my mother’s passing.
A very good friend of mine who lost his brother when we were very young asked me if I had any regrets about being so far during the last few years of my mother’s life, not enjoying or being nearer during the last few months, and I told him that I didn’t have an answer. My parents were not happy when we moved far away, but they knew it was for the best, and that, together with the fact that we tried to see them as often as we were able to, even though towards the last few years it only meant once a year, made things a little bit easier. Many times people who are physically close does not guarantee that they are emotionally closer.  
I know that my mother is at peace, her ashes are right by the place that she was most attached during all her life, the church. Her spirit belongs to God, and to all of us who loved her, and while she is in our memory she will always be alive.
God bless you, Mum.

The past 13 months

As I reflect on the past months, 13 months to be precise, I can think of June 21st 2012 as the day when the world changed for the Anderson family. My mother had been hospitalized many times since1993 when she developed a heart condition and was at the brink of death. But the real beginning of the rapid descent began in 2007 when she started with pulmonary edemas . My mother would be hospitalized for a week or so, they would put her on a severe "diet" of diuretics,  she would be drained of the liquid she had been building up and then sent back home to return to her activities. But June 21st was not an ordinary hospitalization. For me, from the distance, something didn't sound right when my father told me that my mother had been put into an induced coma. This had never happened before.
From the distance I found myself puzzled and confused about the development of what I thought would be a routine hospitalization. My mother was in an induced coma for a period of two to three weeks.
As I found myself having to travel to Argentina to be with my father I was uncertain what I would find when I arrived. By then my mother had been almost three months in the Coronary Unit of a hospital. The day I arrived we went to see her. She had limited visiting hours, from 12.30pm to 2.00 pm. It hardly gave us time to interact with her and talk with the doctors and nurses before the visiting hours were over. My parents live over an hour away by public transport from the hospital where my mother was staying. There was another visiting hour in the evening but my father felt that it made no sense to go back, primarily because of the length of the journey.
As I was getting ready to travel to see my parents I had some questions for the doctors and nurses who attended my mother. Those questions became irrelevant once I got there and the head of the doctors met us in the hallway of the hospital and explained to my father and me that my mother was then a patient who should not be alive, that she should have deceased with the heart condition she had, and to make matters worse she was having trouble with her lungs as well at the time. That gave me an indication of the severity of my mother's illness. As I had not lived near her for over 27 years I had never seen her in a hospital before. She had completely lost her muscle tone, she could not speak because she had a tracheotomy, and she constantly had secretions from her lungs. She was also suffering from almost complete deafness so communicating with her was not exactly easy. Also, as I spoke to nurses who attended to my mother, I came to realize that there was no way that she could leave the hospital as she was under constant surveillance,  something that made her return to their home out of the question.
My parents live in a 3rd floor apartment with no elevator. Getting in and out for them is somewhat of an ordeal as it is not easy climbing up the steps. Even if my mother could recover to the point where she could return home, getting out would make it impossible, therefore she would just come back to die there. As I said earlier, all these things gave me a very clear picture of the future. It was just a matter of time and when God would have compassion on her and call her home.
My father was not there yet, at least my impression at the time was that he was hopeful for a recovery. I am usually someone who loves to bring people down to reality as I feel that reality is, although tough, the only real barometer of things.
On the other hand, my mother was frustrated, she felt jailed, "tied down" to a bed with all the tubes that she had connected. One day I witnessed the volatile rapid change of her condition. In just a matter of minutes she deteriorated, going from stable to struggling, as her sugar level had gone down. This was all foreign to me.
I was there with them for almost three weeks, and during the last week, as I knew that this would probably be the last time that I would see my mother alive, I wanted to spend a little more time with her. She was alone in a room for 22 and a half hours. I know that I would blow my brains out in that situation. So I decided to go to the hospital twice a day, once with my father from 12.30 pm to 2.00 pm, then go back to my parent's home with my father, have something to eat and then turn around and go back. As I said earlier, we would leave the apartment at around 11.00am, get to the hospital at 12.15pm (if everything went ok with the traffic), stay there until 2.00 pm, take the bus back, arrive at my parent's home around 3.15 pm, have lunch and finish around 4.00 pm. Then leave the apartment around 5.45 pm, arrive at the hospital around 7.00 pm (2nd daily visiting hour). leave at 8.00 pm, arrive at my parent's home around 9.15pm, eat dinner, then relax a little while,  and go back and do the same the next day, until I left on Sunday evening.
Saying goodbye to my mother was actually saying goodbye forever as we both pretty much knew that we would not see each other again. It was the toughest goodbye.
For the next few months I kept in contact with my father on a daily basis, and although my mother tried to get up and walk, I don't know if it was through her own will or my father trying to push her forward, she eventually started feeling the impact of being so many months in the hospital and she started deteriorating gradually but surely. First, around the end of last year, her kidneys stopped functioning properly, and she started retaining more and more liquid around her body and then because of the doctor's recommendations, she was sedated continuously as she suffered from panic attacks when she was not under the effects of the drugs. By then my father started telling me that this would probably go on until her body gave up which gave me the feeling that he was trying to prepare me for the inevitable, my mother's passing, something that, back in August, when I arrived there I knew would be the outcome of her hospitalization. I think that, deep down, he was trying to prepare himself for what he realized was the inevitable.
When I received the call from my father on the morning of February 6th I knew perfectly well why he was calling as he never called in the morning. The news for me was expected. I felt that although saying goodbye to one of your parents, to the person who always supported me regardless of what it was, and always trusted me, I felt that God had finally called her home. She was my mother, a friend and a shoulder. She loved unconditionally. She was warm and caring. It took me some time to come to the realization that she is no longer with us. I have felt her presence at times, when I'm alone. I felt it a few days after her passing. A good friend of mine says that it is all in our mind and that may be the case, but some of us still feel the spirit of a loved one near.
At times I feel I'm still not over her passing. As I wasn't there at the time of her passing, I did not see her body lying on the hospital bed, I did not travel to her funeral and witness the disappearance of her casket on the belt as it was going to the place of her cremation, I say that I did not go through the motions of her death and loss.
After my mother's passing my father came to stay with my family in the U.S. for a couple of months. It was the first time that we would be physically together since her passing. We spoke about the events, the last period of her life, and his hopes, but primarily it was a time of sharing, a time of getting closer, of not having to talk, of mutual support, and of loss.
Like my father said while he was staying on vacation with us, “life goes on”.
There will be another sunset and another sunrise. We will eventually go down the same path that my mother took. Our body is not eternal. But it still doesn't get any easier to get used to. Just as I would always tell my mother while she was alive, we always have to be thankful for what God gives us, that we were able to enjoy my mother's life and the way she enriched all of ours.

Virginia bill to override the voice of the majority

Reps have been famous for gerrymandering, for suppressing votes, and now they came up with a new scheme. McDonnell is on his way out. Republicans will lose the governorship, especially with all the extreme laws that they have passed during the present governor's term. They are so desperate that even money doesn't buy elections, that passing unconstitutional voter id laws doesn't do the trick, they have limited the voting hours in areas that vote democrat, the only thing they have not done is close yours voting areas completely, and it would be no surprise if that is their next move. They are still in disbelief that with all the money they threw the public voted against them. The poison that they carry is coming out of their pores, and then they turn around and talk about Christianity. There is no doubt that their followers buy into this stuff, either because they follow Fox, or listen to Rush, and they are not told the whole facts, they are just filtered the news so that they carry more hatred, become more resentful, or simply they like to stay in their bubble. From 1945, and primarily after the building of the Berlin Wall the Soviet Union state networks used to sell its citizens that the US was evil, and they fine-tuned the news to serve a greater purpose. Fox, Rush, Hannity, O’Reilly do exactly the same with the right.
As far as Virginia is concerned it may be part of the South but it has become a purple state, and primarily the areas surrounding Washington DC vote democratic these days. But republicans cannot accept defeat and will do whatever it takes to regain, and keep power, even if that means not allowing the voice of the people to count. Republicans want the minority to govern the majority. It is a state level what the country deals with electoral college at a Federal level.

The effect of the dismantling of unions

We have seen the assault of the top 1% on the middle class for the past 30 years starting with Ronald Reagan, the champion of union busting when he fired all the PATCO workers. ALEC with all its troglodytes, people like the Koch Bros, Adelson, Karl Rove and his supporters hiding behind a mask that covers their crime, the Supreme Court and their many decisions to hurt workers, have been on a crusade to dismantle the middle class, and take the goods that belonged to the middle class. With a system that encourages the purchase of our elections, we have denigrated the country. In this denigration the top 1% comes out victorious. But if we look at the standing of the country we see it reversing. The right wants to make education for the privileged, it is like during the dark ages when only the clergy and the royal families had access to reading and writing, and the masses were illiterate. It is easier to manipulate the masses when they are less informed. Fox is one of these venues that keeps people ill informed, out of the circle of facts, misleading them with fantasies, scaring its audience by telling them that the big black wolf wants to take their houses and rights away. The same can be said about Rush, Hannity, Weiner, and some other out there. The past 30 years has set the country back, and the world pushes forward. One day we will be like China when they looked over the wall and realized that they had fallen behind. In the 70s we were the creditors of the world, but thanks to Ronald Reagan we became since 1985 the debtors of the world. We hardly make anything in the US, we speculate and gamble on money, but the ones eating from that plate is smaller and smaller each day. Speculating on money does not grow an economy, it does not create jobs, it dismantles jobs. If the Chinese would have planned the downfall of the US they could not have come up with a greater plan than the one self-inflicted by the top 1%. We have seen a stagnation of salaries of the middle class while the top 1% has seen its income go from 50 times to 500 times the average middle class income. To make matters worse the top 1% keeps on taking and taking.
Unless the middle class and the poor take action we will see the middle class impoverished, therefore the country will impoverish. If we do not have a robust middle class we cannot move forward as a nation. Unions form part of this package, and it has been thanks to the unions that we have paid vacation time, 8 hour work days. If the 1% would have their way we would have only the money in the hands of the 1% and the rest of us as slaves.

Era of liberalism is back

The minority on the right, the defenders of the 1% see the possible threat to their lavish 1920s lifestyle threatened. Since 1981 they have ransacked the country’s finances, impoverished the 99% at their expense, outsourced the middle classes jobs for their own benefit, stuck the middle class and the poor with the bill for their luxurious “Great Gabsy” style partying, with bogus wars, destruction of the world’s climate polluting the soil, the water, the air, and the brains of the weak minded who listen to the right radio talk shows and Fox, and now, that the president made some references about all of us in the same boat together, that the right denies climate change they are freaking out. The fact that the president was voted by more people than Romney, that the Senate picked up two more seats, and that the House was only kept in the hands because of gerrymandering of republicans in State Houses, even though democrats received a lot more votes than republicans did, is proof that the GOP is becoming more and more isolated, by the American people and by an ideology that has become obsolete, that is stuck in an era that has passed us, and time does not go back, the GOP is stuck in the industrial era and the world is already moving forward past the era of computers into tablets and smartphones.

The USA witnessed from 1981 until 2008 the reduction in the size of the middle class, the increase of the poor, and the biggest transfers of wealth from the middle class and the poor in history. We also witnessed the erosion of rights by the government, starting with George W Bush and the Patriot Act, the wiretapping of phone calls, the intrusion in having full access to emails, tweets, and all personal information, supposedly for security reasons.

The GOP has been in the business of voter suppression for many years, but we saw nothing like what we saw in 2012. And to prove that this issue has not gone away we can see the GOP redistricting the state of Virginia to try to benefit themselves, and in the state of Pennsylvania where they want to change the electoral college and base it on the amount of districts won by one candidates instead of the total amount of votes, thus defeating the will of the people. The latest reminds us how the Soviet Union used to operate, or even Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Kaddafi in Libya decided elections.
The GOP has proven over and over for almost half a century since the civil rights act that the way of winning elections was by not allowing groups of people to decide who their representatives would be.
When the GOP is concerned that the era of liberalism is back the rest of the country should then feel at ease. When liberals were having their way the country enjoyed the largest middle class in the history of humankind, the civil rights act was being passed and the country had a better standard of living as the country was the leader of the world, not just in military spending but in every respect, a place that is now part of history and not of the present that we live in.