I want to have hope, but foreboding seems to have rented a room in my head and I am not sure what life will be like in a week or so….Warning! This will not be an uplifting read….sorry.

IT HAS BEEN a while – quite a while – since I posted here. 

            My mind has otherwise been occupied and its stuff not worth sharing on most days. I have been adrift in…well, I don’t know. I suspect some of you may feel the same way and it has come to me in the night, from which I awake more tired than when it began, that it all comes down to Nov. 5.

            I said at the beginning of this blog that I would not be writing about politics and in terms of specifics, I will not break that vow. But I will write about foreboding and fatigue and the wall that is Nov. 5. If you are looking to be uplifted, inspired, stop reading. It’s not that kind of morning.

            I got up this morning and changed my routine. I did not turn on the TV news. I did not, on my iPad, go to any news sites. I plugged in my Buddha water feature and listened to the gurgling water and his silence in the moment and did crosswords, read the comics, skipping the news pages of the local and national papers. I played Angry Birds.

            I have had enough of the news, the ads. I cannot absorb any more. Last night a pundit was parsing my candidate’s speech, one of hope and possibilities, and he asked “how can she not be at 90 percent?” and the answer from his guest darkened the veil. “It is where we are,” she said. 

            I don’t want to be in this world of foreboding anymore, but as I lay awake in the darkness last night, I wondered what my life might be like after Nov. 5 if my candidate loses, along with others in her party. Over a long life I have observed from the outside the death of nations and cultures, but I have not experienced it within my own nation.

            In the darkness I want to have hope, but I find myself blanketed not by soft sheets but by this sense of foreboding. I have long been haunted by the musical Cabaret in all its iterations over the years. It is a musical I cannot stand to watch but one I cannot turn away from. It is, in the end, a story of people turning up the music to keep out the horrible sounds of a society descending into a man-made hell. They sing until the stage goes dark and 1930s Berlin becomes a film shot in black and white, seen from dark alleys. 

            On Nov. 6 my life will either continue as it has and we will all run through spring-time meadows, frilly clothing blowing in the wind, birds singing in our ears like in all the instant-cure drug commercials. Or we will sit alone in the Cabaret or in the mists of Tolkien’s world, looking at the dark mountain where the fire burns and the smoke comes down and not knowing what comes next.

            Overly dramatic and emotional? I suppose so. But I am practicing, this last week before Nov. 5, practicing for a life I never have known and cannot define. I hope it does not come, but just in case…..

            The news is off. The newspapers are unread. I will play games, strum my guitar (poorly) and read books that take me into worlds where the sun shines and all the murderers are caught. I will walk outside and look at trees and live in a world with walls that only let in those I love.

            And if it darkness does not come? I will feel a joy I cannot express other than through tears and in my heart and mind I will hug my children and grandchildren – all the children  – and be thankful they can the lives of possibilities that come only when all are free to chase dreams.  

                  Rich Heiland is a retired journalist and semi-retired consultant, trainer and public speaker. During his journalism career he was a reporter, editor, publisher, college instructor, part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team and a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year honoree. He also writes the intodementia.com blog about his family’s experience with dementia. He lives in West Chester, PA and can be reached at [email protected].