Absolutely dead on Coach!

I do not believe the message our parents tried to send has been absorbed, to say the least. We Americans and Canadians are the decendants of peoples from all over the earth.

I attended a life celebration the other day of a "parent" we all know. We have all heard of their sacrifices; a world we are all far too divorced from. They worked so hard to save their pennies and create good, solid lives with values, principles, respect for others, a strong work ethic and low expectations. Having a job was everything, no matter how menial or exhausting. Pride was a luxury ill afforded. Higher education was beyond their grasp, but totally within reach of those they toiled for, their children. For the women of that time, our senior generation's parents, their burdens and toils were equally tempering.

They "buggered on" through two world wars and a depression and suffered deep losses of husbands, sons and daughters. The deceased husband of the woman who's service I mentioned above, suffered through five years, yes , five years in various Japanese POW camps, enduring inhuman conditions that no one should survive. He came home and relished a "career" as a "milk man", you know, the guy that deilvered the milk to your parent's doors in the fifities and sixteis. They raised three kids in a tiny house they were proud of.

Their message has been lost. You all identify with "Uncle Joe" and your dad arguing politics at the family social gatherings lovingly planned by the toiling and tempered mothers and wives that that age provided. We children were truly blessed. Those 'debates' raised the ire of many at those family gatherings. But what were they all about? What was their message? What they were all about my friends, was fear. Those men who appreciated the chance to have a job and a roof and good food were fearful that it would end. They had a sense that the political expediency of the day was growing into the very financial disasters that they had lived through...all of which created war, mass suffering, starvation, cruelty and death.

Have we paid attention? NO! Those legacies that we have witnessed first hand should have been branded into our lifestyles. The mistakes of the past are being ignored by the present. We have not heard 'the message'. Therefore it's relevance will not be heard and our ability to deal with it is lost. Our senior generation parents wanted their message to be learned loud and clear.

We are deaf.