.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

The waves

As the Wind Blows

Name:
Location: Chennai, Tamilnadu, India

13 June 2004

"I know in my heart that Man is ... Good... What is right will Always triumph...."

The words inscribed in Ronald Reagan's Grave. If any of you have noticed the entire sentence, could you please share with me? However much I tried, I could not read the complete sentence hidden by the guards near the coffin.

(added later on:
Venkat gave the full sentence : here it goes.. "I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life."

thanks Venkat.)


Even as thousands of people paid tribute and leaders and kith and kin spoke moving words warmly remembering the former president, BBC also chose to discuss touch upon the issue of glossing too much over the Reagan era as somethng of a golden era which it really wasn't. I felt it was not in good taste, though the observation was made only as a passing reference.

That aside, the last journey of the former US president was really touching. Particularly the warm remembrances from his children. Patti Davis had earlier told a magazine about how her father could not have given a better gift in his last breath, when he opened his eyes - which had not opened for days together - and looked at her mother lovingly as if to say one last time - I love you". This, I guess, would now be part of the legacy Reagan had left behind. A loving husband leaving a final gift for his wife of 52 years.

Davis repeated this last memory of her father once again at this sunset ceremony at Simi Valley. Some of the memories remembered by the children actually helped to lighten the heaviness of the situation - like when Davis said; she was crestfallen when a fish from her aquarium died. Her father gave it a funeral ceremony in the garden and when they buried the fish her father told her that the fish would be happy now "back in its home"; happy in a place where there is no misery and there is no pain and no suffering. " I thought immediately," Davis remembered, " why not kill all the fish in the aquarium, so that all of them will be happy in a painless world?" How could the audience not laugh at this - notwithstanding the heaviness of the atmosphere, charged with grief?!!

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home