The Great Adjustment
Orphaned. Widowed. Departed.
Words that identify loss as an identity in perpetuity.
You can never unbecome these identities for as long as life goes on; for as long as anyone lives who remembers your life.
What happens after that? Who are you in your palace of tears and memories you built with all of your effort forever but are now too sweet and painful to call on and you just seek to forget?
Orphaned. Widowed. Departed.
Words that identify loss as an identity in perpetuity.
You can never unbecome these identities for as long as life goes on; for as long as anyone lives who remembers your life.
What happens after that? Who are you in your palace of tears and memories you built with all of your effort forever but are now too sweet and painful to call on and you just seek to forget?
I imagine a future world – probably soon – where we debate getting the chip installed. We will no longer need a password for anything or have to remember how to log in through vpns, authenticators or various apps. “I’m going for it,” one friend in her 70’s told me. “I’m never giving them that control,” another commits.
The ones who give into the chip installment process early have a huge advantage. They save all kinds of time and energy and never suffer a pause in their day to log in or provide an OTP.
The long-term effects and wether the chip could cause us to pop-off in future is still to be seen. Rumored reports of the elderly performing extreme and unexpected data hacks in the Hong Kong markets have given some concern.
The main frame is reputed to be space-bot piloted, spinning by on an untraceable orbiting satellite. Apparently the conglomerate is privately owned and the the authority having regulatory jurisdiction undetermined, and held up in various international courts. But what a relief to declutter the mind and sweep on toward the future.
In the waiting area for the tiny plane to the private island, i’m slugging from the Grey Goose bottle i just panic-bought in the overpriced duty-free shop, upon landing. All around me, people are joyful; i remain remotely rigid. Smiling into the neck of the bottle, i thought of the beaming, young Qatari women who wished me a great stay. One of the pair had been here before. She motioned to her partner – “It’s her first time. You’re really in for a treat.” Once the big plane had landed, they shed their abayas, their aloof demeanors, and the burden of hiding their love. Habibti.
Our plane was late. Or in need of repair. “That was supposed to be your plane.” The manager showed me the mechanic working in the little hanger. “We are waiting for two more passengers. If they make it, we’ll be over our weight limit, so each couple will leave one bag behind.” Huh. Why had we packed so sparingly – so very irritatingly mathematically, weighing and re-weighing our small duffels, only to be displaced by some tardy honeymooners? I went back into the lounge and took another pull of the vodka, not really bothering to hide it anymore.
Years spent in the oft-touted-wealthiest-country-in-the-world can make a girl brazenly entitled. It had been four years of seemingly-limitless abuse and struggle in a furnace of nation and now our first break since surviving an impossible project. Entitlement and her sister, Disdain, almost always roll downhill. As a middleman, i had reliably superior aim, and, for my husbands happiness, i am a lioness. My dad had just died. I hadn’t saved him nor given him all the experiences he had still had a taste for — and i’d be damned if anything was going to get in the way of giving the man i had left everything he deserved.
My finely-tuned InshAllah seemed enfeebled by a fleeting and baseless sense of influence over the course of life’s events. When one’s relation to life loses the slipperiness of accepting everything, the resulting friction can be nearly lethal. With this hot antagonism, i greeted the holiday.
October 27th 1942 – May 11th 2023
We are very sad to announce the passing of Albert R. Rago, Esquire, on May 11, 2023 at the age of 80, at his home in Maple Shade, NJ. He was a monumental person whose departure leaves an unfillable absence in our hearts. Al is survived by his loving wife, Janice, his daughters, Caroline (Rago) Campbell and Kate (Rago) Schwartz, stepson Peter Papaleo, sister and brother-in-law Sandra and Nicholas Finio, grandchildren Olivia and Alexander Schwartz, sons-in-law James Campbell and Jeffrey Schwartz, nephew Christopher Finio and niece Alexandra Handza.
Oxford’s dictionary defines a Renaissance Man as “a person who has wide interests and is expert in several areas.” Alternatively, you could just list a picture of Al.
Devoted husband, father, son, brother, and best friend, in good times and bad, Al was your confidante. He was the first call for many when we wanted to share something about our lives, get advice, a recipe, or simply discuss the day. Metaphysical musings or just what to serve for dinner, Al kept tabs on all the moments of our lives, and simultaneously a macro perspective on world events. He was always the most well-informed, yet somehow the most humble person in the room.
While his accomplishments and interests are too vast to name, Family was above everything to him. He was proud of his ancestors and relatives and so involved in all of our lives. This was evidenced in how he cared for us on the daily and in his choice to leave us on his beloved parents’ wedding anniversary. During one of his debilitating rounds of cancer treatment, Al penned his “Bristol Tales,” an intimate portrait of an Italian childhood in a small immigrant town. His legal briefs and his personal writings were concise, witty, and always poignant.
As an undergraduate at Dickinson College, Al partied famously with his friends and fraternity brothers, many of whom remain close with him today. He fell in love with jazz music and saw many of the greats perform live. A successful young attorney who was published in the Law Review, Al expressed his independent thinking and ethics, pioneering his own firm, sporting a beard in court in the 1970’s, and serving many clients pro bono, always helping those in need with kindness and sage advice. He carried on his father’s legacy to help those around him and championed personal and charitable causes with great impact. He was inducted into the US Supreme Court. Al had a warrior’s heart and fought with determination until the end.
Al loved all animals, the outdoors, and wildlife, a passion gained through childhood summers with his own Papi in the Pocono Mountains. He passed this passion and respect for the natural world on to his grandchildren. Al learned about horses as an adult, breeding and training showjumping champions while managing the family barn as well as a racing syndicate. He treasured his small fishing boat and his time on the open water. At their condo in Ventnor, he would kiss Janice goodbye and head out before dawn with his rods, excited to see what the catch of the day would be. He took his friends and grandkids out to watch the birds, catch fish, or trap crabs, narrating along with the hum of the motor or the silence of the breeze.
If you wanted to know how to peel an onion without crying, the rules and workings of the US congress, impeccably groom a horse, trim the sails on a yacht, read tides, tie a fly, navigate traffic, sharpen your knives, bonsai a tree, plant a garden, discuss literature, or bait a hook, Al was there to show you. He had perfect pitch, did not suffer fools, and would call things in stark reality. Al could be a fiery advocate or a pragmatic peacemaker. He brought fight and passion to all his critiques, whether to a legal case or his own mortality.
Al’s zest for life was beyond compare, and the world will feel empty without this Renaissance man. We are beyond grateful for all he has left us, and for the beautiful way he has taught us how to love.
Please join us in sharing a message, a memory, or photo of Al. Thank you for your love and support. ❤️
In lieu of flowers, donations in Al’s memory may be made to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital (www.stjude.org) and/or the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU (www.aclu.org).
Written by Sparrow Campbell & Kate Schwartz
It’s one of those moments that my small brain holds tight to. A Where were you when? moment… Moon Landing, 9-11 Attacks, Hurricane Katrina.
Pre-trauma, the mind tends to speed up – like when your entire wedding reception is a blur in retrospect. In true trauma, my mind tends to slow W-A-Y, W–A–Y, D — O — W — N… driving a car when it starts flipping and you have time to consider your family … your relationships … your place in the universe … very, slowly, thoughtfully before the full impact of the crash.
Hurricane Katrina was like that. I was a newlywed. I had a new job in Washington DC. We saw the storm coming on the Weather Channel. We saw the images on the victims on TV. We saw the train going off the rails, our brutally unAmerican response. It was the biggest U.S. crisis in my adult life.
“We have to go,” I said to my freshly minted husband.
“Not until we get paid to go,” said his sage mentor.
“We have the skills to help,” I said.
“Let’s see what we can do.”
And we did go. And we did help. The skills of disaster management were natural for us. This was the most meaningful job of my career.
In the aftermath of this American disaster, the children of Katrina were left to manage their own trauma. As humans, seeking the healing we need is our work to do. And there is much to do.
At last we will have a chance to see the perspective of these children in the new HBO documentary from filmmaker Edward Buckles Jr., who was 13 years old during Katrina. Buckles spent seven years documenting the stories of his peers who survived the storm as children and processing his own grief, displacement story, and loss.
If you don’t know where you came from, it’s hard to know where you are going.
Living in the bizarro bubble of Doha has fed a sense of constant floating between identities and locales … yet never really being someone, somewhere, someTHING or truly belonging anywhere.
God bless those who still show up for me, for lately i am but a ghost, mostly.
I miss the movement of people and the stillness of being quiet in a room where some one else is.
The life of an expat is inherently isolating. But when the whole earth is losing her familiar strings that tie here together, am i wasting energy even trying to fasten some?
When J. was a kid, his brother used to sing the Stones song “Never Leave Your Pizza Burning… My back is broad, but it’s a-hurting.”
It’s a been a reference point for many things we get wrong – but think we are right about – for years!
In reprising some oldies, i just learned that Perry Farrel, in possibly the best 2-chord song in history, had written that Jane said she felt naked without her wig. I always heard “Have you seen my wig around? I’ll film that gig without it.”
I prefer it.
Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast is called Revisionist History so i’ll take it.
Never leave your pizza burning.
Do you have some revisionist lyrics like that from youth?