White Supremacy Culture?

July 22, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I read something yesterday that so shocked me, I’ve spent the past hour backtracking my digital footprints to make sure that what I thought I read was actually what I read. And it is.

So, the House Oversight Committee is questioning the Smithsonian bias, especially the exhibits in the National Museum of American History, which apparently is following through with the leftist agenda of emphasizing the country’s historical oppression and wickedness rather than anything patriotic.

I understand that the oppression is part of the back story, but it isn’t the entire story. Nor do past oppressions define where we are today. This is like people judging me by what my great-grandfather did. He apparently had two wives, though not at the same time, at least I don’t think he did. One he threw down the stairs, the other he locked away in an insane asylum. He was also a scientist of note, working with Edison and others of that ilk. So what does any of that say about me and my family today? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Still, the museum’s emphasis on framing history as oppressors/oppressed is typical of what is going on today, so that didn’t shock me. What did is something that came out during the hearing. Apparently, the Smithsonian uses something called a Mass Action Toolkit (MASS = Museum as Site for Social Action) to ensure that the museum promotes equity, inclusion, and anti-oppression and that it focuses on transforming society, which quite frankly, should not be the museum’s mission, especially one predominately funded by taxpayer money. (Hence the hearing.)

And even that isn’t shocking. The whole world, it seems, wants to be able to do what they want on the taxpayer’s dime.

So, the shocking part: the Smithsonian’s Mass Action Toolkit lists politeness, objectivity, individualism, linear thinking, planning for the future, avoiding conflicts, managing time, protecting property, a sense of urgency, and worship of the written word as characteristics of white supremacy culture.

What??? Politeness? Objectivity? Individualism? Linear thinking? Planning for the future? Being on time? Those are characteristics of white supremacy? No. No. No. They are characteristics of a civilized person, someone who strives to be decent and who treats others as they want to be treated. Those aren’t white things, nor are they bad things. Those should be characteristics for everyone to strive for. As for “a sense of urgency.” I have no idea what that means, nor do I know why the written word is a problem, unless it’s because too many people don’t know how to read.

Who makes up this stuff? Who believes it? And what is anyone supposed to do about it? Start being rude? Learn how not to read? Give up our individualism and follow the crowd even if it’s leading us off a political cliff? Become as biased as those who are aligned against anything that might be considered white culture? And what the heck is “white supremacy culture,” anyway? Just being white? Just existing?

Even writing this, I find the whole thing shocking and disturbing and unbelievable, but apparently, this nonsense is being sold as truth.

I’m going out to work in my garden. That, at least, makes sense to me.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Singing Our Laws

July 18, 2026 — Pat Bertram

People have often used songs and rhymes as memory aids. In fact, I still have to run through that ditty we learned in grade school when I need to know how many days in a month. You know the one:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
All the rest have thirty-one,
Save February at twenty-eight,
But leap year, coming once in four,
February then has one day more.

To be honest, I only remember the first four lines; I had to look up the mnemonic to find out the last lines because I never need them. I know how many days February has.

A memory song we learned was the alphabet song, though again, I don’t need to ever sing it (and the world thanks me for that small favor) because I do know the alphabet.

Something I didn’t know until just now when I read it, was that in a lot of previous societies, laws were written in verse so that they could be sung in public places to inform people of the rules, and also so that they could be handed down the generations without the usual tendency of people to unwittingly change what they heard.

This made me smile, thinking about doing such a thing today. Can you imagine? We are long past the days of Moses’ 10 laws and Hammurabi’s 282. In fact, we have so many laws, they are uncountable beyond a guess that they are in the many millions, which makes sense when you consider that the Federal government, state governments, and some city governments all have dedicated legislative branches that do nothing but make up laws to pass. Often, those laws become obsolete, such as any laws pertaining to horses and buggies, though they are seldom removed from the books. More frequently, laws are piled one on top the other, though the first law, if upheld, would do the job. Such as insider trading. There are laws against insider trading, but apparently, Congress excused themselves from those laws (how, I don’t know), so now, if they really want to ban insider trading, they have to create new laws to ban something that is already banned. In addition to laws (or under the heading of law might be a better phrasing), there are millions of statutes and regulations. And any ruling by a judge in a trial becomes law if only by precedent.

So, all those laws now extant in the United States. How long to you think it would take to sing that song? Decades? And if they were all etched in stone like Hammurabi’s code, how many times would the necessary stone tablets encircle the earth?

Enquiring minds are simply . . . enquiring.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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All the World’s a Stage

July 10, 2026 — Pat Bertram

It’s only recently that I’ve become aware of politics as identity and identity as ideology. Somehow, I thought people were bright enough to stand apart from what they believed, to see themselves as a person believing a thing, not believing that they were the thing believed. But apparently not. When some people buy into a political ideology, they identify with that ideology, and when the ideology is attacked, they think that they themselves are being attacked, not just their idea.

I can’t imagine holding any idea so strongly that a destruction of that belief would destroy me, but that is not the case with a lot of people. Decades ago in a theology class, the teacher broke down everything we believed. His intent, if I remember correctly, was to make us rethink what we thought we knew. To get us to start building up a new way of thinking. Before he got to that point though, a student in the class got really upset, and told him he was destroying everything we believed without giving us anything to replace it. It was as if he had destroyed us, since those beliefs were the foundation of our lives until then, and most of the class were as upset as that one student, but it didn’t bother me. It was just something else to learn, is all. (As far as I was concerned, nothing I learned in school was ever about me. It was just the curriculum.)

To be honest, that’s the only thing about that class I remember. Well, there was one other odd thing that has stuck in my mind all these years. He taught that “Love is the movement of an appetite toward a recognized good.” (His exact words.) I think the discussion that day centered on the supposition that if this were true, then what we think of love is really like and vice versa. But the upshot of that class is lost in the shadows of time. Or rather, in the shadows of my mind. Odd that I remembered those two bits.

A more recent example comes from The Wheel of Time. In the books, there is a people, a warrior society, that takes their entire identity from their belief that they were always warriors, that what sets them apart from others and makes them morally superior is that they use spears rather than swords, their thinking being that spears can also be used for hunting while swords can only be used to kill other humans. When this ideology was proven false, a huge percentage of those people couldn’t handle it and ran away, not just from their culture but from themselves. (It often seems to me that these books are a brand-new allegory instead of a decades-old fantasy series.)

The odd thing is that the story of this warrior society helps me understand many politically motivated people today, while at the same time, these people today help me understand the people in this warrior society.

Another odd thing is that in the book, the chiefs of this society knew that the destruction of their beliefs and their people had been prophesied, but as a chief said, “It’s one thing to know prophesy will be fulfilled eventually, another to see that fulfillment before your very eyes.”

This statement certainly rings true to me. It’s one thing to spend a lifetime studying “prophesy,” aka history, both overt and hidden, and to know that one day we will be balanced on the knife edge of keeping our country a constitutional republic or turning into another sociologic cesspool, but seeing it happen before my eyes is . . . disheartening. It’s also weird to see all the political, global, and economic machinations that had been going on behind the scenes my whole life, suddenly appearing on stage as if it’s no big deal. I’d always presumed I’d be gone by the time this new world order would be put into effect, but it’s happening faster than I expected. I try to look at it as seeing history in the making — both the push toward socialism and the pushback of the republic — but it’s hard to continue to see it all as “out there.” It comes too close, at times.

Still, whatever happens, I will still be me. My identity is only as a truth seeker, not as a victim or oppressor. (And even “truth seeker” is only a surface identity. I am . . . me. Period. I am not my ideas. Not my writing. I’m just me. No further definition needed.) And, if I am being truthful, there is a chance I will never see the fruition of this current push since part of the “ideology” has always been to get rid of the old folks who are perceived by the young as using up too many resources without contributing anything.

But who knows. The curtain is up. The play is still going on, and we have yet to discover the plot.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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78 Degrees

July 3, 2026 — Pat Bertram

There’s not much to laugh about when it comes to socialistic energy restrictions, or even simply grids so old that such restrictions are necessary, but I do find the current 78˚ restriction in some places amusing. For most of my life, despite living in the intense heat of Colorado summers, I didn’t have air conditioning at all, so 90+ temperatures in the house weren’t that uncommon. I’ve also lived a couple of places with air conditioning, but the person in control of the thermostat blasted air into the room so icy that I had to close the vents.

Now that I have air-conditioning and control of the thermostat, I have it set at 80. Sometimes, if I’m hot, I’ll lower it to 79, especially since my “office” is the least cool room in the house, but usually the room fan works as well as lowering the temperature.

Even if this weren’t a temperature I could get used to, I’d probably do it anyway. During my years (decades!) of no air-conditioning, I learned that the warmer the inside temperature, the less impact walking out into the heat has on one’s system. Going from hot to a blasting air-conditioner or from refrigerated air to extreme heat can be dangerous. For most people, the physiological stress is brief, but for others, it can strain the heart and worsen cardiovascular and respiratory conditions. And even if it weren’t dangerous, it’s easier to adapt to the outside temperature when the difference isn’t so great.

Too be honest, though, if a communist mayor were to tell me to raise my thermostat to 78˚, I’d lower my usual temperature to that setting just as a rebellion.

Or maybe not. Paying out money I don’t have to make a point seems silly. And anyway, I prefer to be able to set the temperature to my preference even if it does fit into someone else’s agenda. Having the choice is something to celebrate, especially during this holiday weekend when we’re celebrating 250 years of freedom.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Hope

June 30, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I don’t really pay attention to generation labels. I mean, I know what a couple of the names are, but I haven’t a clue as to where they fall in the age spectrum (my age spectrum, specifically), or what, if anything, any of those groups want. I also don’t know what the ethos of each group is, assuming there is such a thing. I can see certain characteristics, such as people having grown up using phones as a child, or their feeling a sense of doom or lack of hope for the future, but not everyone in any particular generation is the same. For example, while there could be a lot of clownishly-dressed protestors in a particular generation, there could also be what used to be called “clean cut” people trying to create a different life for themselves.

To be honest, I don’t have a lot of contact with the youngest generations, and when I do, they are generally respectful. I’m also aware that a whole lot of younger people follow the socialist party line of “billionaires bad, trillionaires worse.” But then again, so do a lot of people of all ages. Too many people are totally ignorant about how money is made and how wealth is created. Wealth is not a single pie of limited size, as they seem to presume. Every wealth creator (people who own businesses and who work at them) adds to the size of the pie, which benefits everyone. And even if those wealth creators were taxed out of existence, not much, if any, of that money will end up in the hands of those ignorant folk. There are too many grifters out there already standing in line with their hands out.

I also know that a lot of younger generations are unpatriotic; apparently many see the country as a hellhole with no redeeming characteristics. But then, so do a lot of the older generations. Outrage seems to be the name of their game, and algorithms only feed their insularity. Others are simply apathetic.

Lately, though, I’ve been seeing a different side of those young folks. Two young men started “Relay for America,” a run to carry the flag from the Pacific Coast to Washington DC — keeping that flag moving day and night, without stopping. Over 250 official relay runners have signed up, and others join them along the route. Each mile is dedicated to a veteran. Their hope is to unite America with this show of patriotism and community.

Another couple of young men (one who has entirely too much energy and soles of leather since he runs barefoot) started a running club called Unify America. They travel to various places, run with a flag, hoping to spread their message of love and joy and patriotism.

Recently, the second group joined the first for part of the relay. Symbolic, that.

This show of patriotism, fitness, and solidarity gives me hope. Perhaps the communist ideals creeping through the country are not a foregone conclusion. Perhaps there is a spiritual, maybe even a political, balance at play.

Another thing that gives me hope is the rise of independent journalism. Young people with phones and cameras and a steadfast desire to tell the truth are a perfect foil for the propaganda of the alphabet press. Instead of sitting in air-conditioned studios parroting the approved stories, those young journalists are out there, standing on their own two shod feet, showing what the established press doesn’t want us to see.

Even if they’re not out gathering their own stories, there is a growing group of conservative podcasters who try to dispel the lies that are so often peddled by far-left extremists, especially those of a similar age, and to tell the truth as they live it.

It’s good to know that these young men and women are out there. They bring hope to world. And to me.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Never Underestimate the Power of an Author

June 26, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I wasn’t going to do any more political posts — as I keep saying, it’s getting too dangerous. Not that I’m bringing myself to anyone’s attention, it’s just that the internet is forever, and who knows what will be the end of this push toward, not just socialism, but communism.

So what got my goat this time? The socialists/communists are saying they want a Scandinavian-type socialism rather than a Venezuelan-type, which, of course, shows their ignorance, or perhaps shows that they are relying on the ignorance of their constituents.

To be honest, I’m just as ignorant about how things work over there as anyone else, though I do know a few basics. The Nordic Model combines capitalism with an extensive government-funded social welfare system. In particular, what Sweden has is a parliamentary representative democratic constitutional monarchy, which seems to mean that the power comes from the people, with the prime minister as head of the government, the king head of parliament, and officials elected by the people to represent them. They are a capitalist state with a large taxpayer funded welfare system. Meaning that, unlike true socialism, people own their businesses, not the state.

Because of Sweden’s early free market system, by 1970, they were one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Then, in 1970, they began playing around with socialism. The government was horrifically expanded, taxes were massive, wealthy businesses left the country, zero jobs were created. By 1990, they realized their experiment was a disaster. They discovered they could have big business or big government, not both. As Kjell-Olof Feldt, Social Democratic Minister of Finance (1983–1990) said: “What we believed in as young socialists simply turned out to be impossible in practice.”

Now, their socialism is funded heavily by low and middle-income families, not just the rich. It’s still not a utopia by any means. As with all western countries, their open borders have created a high incidence of gang-related shootings, problems with local integration, and a huge drain on their welfare system.

So why do I know all this? Pippi Longstocking. Do you remember her? The storybook hero we all (especially us quiet bookish types), admired so much?

In 1970, at the beginning of the Swedish socialist experiment, Astrid Lindgren, the author of the Pippi Longstocking books, was sent a tax bill for 102% of her earnings. Yep. Socialism on steroids. (Socialists seem to like to steal from authors. One bestselling author is trying to leave a neighboring country, but he can’t leave until he forks over about 65% of his investments via an “exit tax.” Not his income, not his realized capital gains. His investments and savings. So, he can stay and spend an ever-increasing share of the tax burden, or he can leave and lose more than half of what he’d spent his life earning.)

Anyway, Astrid Lundgren fought back like an author — she wrote allegories that were very obviously a critique of the government’s tax system, but that people loved and understood. The press called her selfish. The prime minister blamed her for betraying the country. But she kept writing. And talking. She explained about the unfairness of a tax that punished the people who created wealth by stealing even more from them than they earned. People listened. In 1976, they voted out the Social Democratic Party that had ruled for over forty years.

The tax system was overhauled. Still, they didn’t dump socialism for another fifteen years.

So the moral of this story is . . . well, I’m not sure what the ultimate message is, but one is never to underestimate the power of an author beloved the world over. Another is not to listen to what the communists in the United States are saying about the “good” socialism they want, because the truth is that socialism doesn’t work, and you can’t tax the rich ad infinitum.

And of course, in my case, the main moral is not to get me riled up.

Though it did give me a blog topic, so there’s that.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Success

June 22, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s your top tip to be successful in life?
View all responses

There are two ways to be successful in life. The first is to decide what being successful means to you, then focus on what will get you there. If being successful means being in a loving relationship, then prioritize that, don’t be distracted by what others think being successful means. If being successful means raising healthy and happy children, don’t give up time with them for other pursuits that might interfere, though sometimes, admittedly, what interferes is the need to make enough money to support those children. If being successful means making a ton of money, then go after it, but don’t be surprised when you find that other parts of your life aren’t as satisfying. If being successful means being a good person, following one’s faith, or doing simple acts of kindness, then that’s what you focus on.

Of course, just because you go after something doesn’t mean you will succeed at it, so this brings me to the second way of being successful — being grateful for what you have and what you have accomplished. Enjoying the moment. Celebrating your good fortune and accepting that you did what you could. And not comparing yourself to others. What you might see as their success, they might not. In fact, they might be comparing themselves to you, thinking you are the successful one.

When I became a writer, I hoped for success, which at the time meant being a self-supporting writer, selling enough books to make a living wage so I could write more books. Unfortunately, I didn’t succeed at being self-supporting, but I did succeed at writing. I wrote nine books, all of which were published. That I was not successful at promoting those books does not mitigate the success of having written all those words, told those stories, offered a helping hand to people who have lost a spouse or a child.

Just the other day, a woman came up to me to tell me she’d bought two copies of Grief: The Inside Story, one for her sister who had lost her husband and one for herself so she could understand what her sister was going through. It was due to the comfort offered in my book as well as the explanation of the mechanics of grief, that helped the sister finally sleep through the night, which, if you don’t know, is a big step for grievers. Also, the woman who bought the books was able to support her sister, letting her sister grieve as she needed to, without urging her to “get over it.” She had tears in her eyes as she thanked me for what I had given them.

So . . . . success. Yes? No? Well, the book did not solve my financial woes as I’d hoped, but oh, my, having truly helped someone who needed it? That is success. Maybe it’s even a more profound success than making money — to those two women, it certainly was.

So, in short, decide what success means to you, focus on what you need to do to achieve that success, and then celebrate whatever success comes your way, even if it comes in a way you never envisioned.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Conceptions of Happiness

June 19, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What’s a common misconception people have about happiness?
View all responses

I’m not sure what misconceptions people have about happiness since I don’t know how they perceive happiness.

I do know that happiness is elusive. If we go chasing it, we don’t always find it. If we stop chasing it, happiness often finds us. And even if happiness doesn’t find us, there are other things that are just as important: contentment, being at peace, meeting challenges, living a meaningful life, making a difference to someone, helping others find happiness, creating something, growing a garden.

Sometimes, too, not being particularly happy is a proper response. Most reasonable people, in a tornado, try to get out of the wind, not revel in the devastation. Most reasonable people do not revel in misfortune, theirs or others. And, unless laughter is one’s way of dealing with anything intense in life, unhappiness during a time of grief is an entirely appropriate and reasonable response.

Neither happiness nor unhappiness is a constant state. Both are in flux and either can change in a moment. And so can one’s perception.

Studies have indicated that happiness is found mainly in retrospect. For example, happy children don’t know they are happy. They simply are. It’s only later, when they look back, perhaps after a terrible time in their adult lives, that they realize they had been happy in their early years. For another example, when someone is involved in a challenging situation that takes all their time and energy, they don’t realize until later they were happy. In fact, often while going through this situation, people thought they were decidedly unhappy.

Think of some of the happy times in your life. Back then, were you aware you were happy? Chances are, you were involved in living and didn’t bother to stop to think how you were feeling at the moment. You just lived. Not pursuing happiness as such, just simply living with whatever happiness came your way.

Oddly, happiness can also be found in anticipation. When a person is going through a difficult time, sometimes they get through the days by looking ahead to future happiness. Those who are grieving can hope for a time when joy might come again. If work is difficult, people can find happiness in planning a vacation.

In other words, happiness is not generally found in the present; it’s a construct of both the past and the future, which seems to make happiness irrelevant to the present.

Perhaps oddly, I have never considered happiness something to pursue. Even before I realized happiness was something lived in retrospect, I never thought it was relevant. I thought other things were more important. Trying to be a good person, for example. Doing the best I could for myself and others. Learning, for sure — I have always pursued knowledge, have always searched for a deeper truth.

I wasn’t happy very often, but it didn’t seem to matter. In fact, being not happy (neither happy nor unhappy) is my default state, so perhaps I’m not the best person to be blogging about happiness.

Still, having said all this, whatever your conceptions of happiness are, I hope you find what you are looking for.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Talking to My Twenty-year-old Self

June 17, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self?
View all responses

Hypothetical questions like this make me think — not about the question I’m supposed to blog about, but the mechanics of it.

Truly, assuming there was something I wished I could tell my twenty-year old self, how would that work?

At first, I thought of leaving a message somewhere for me to find when I reached this age, but then I realized that’s the reverse of the question. Besides, there’s nothing my twenty-year old self could say to me today that would make any difference. If there was something that was important enough for that younger version of me to want forwarded into the future, it’s already been done. First, there is a little thing called a memory. Second, even if I don’t recall the important thing itself, it would be written in my very life — everything that ever happened to me stemmed from the thoughts of that year (and every year) so any message would be redundant.

As for the logistics of getting a message back to that younger self — reverse email? But email hadn’t been invented back then. That twenty-year old self would have to wait several more decades to receive the message, and by then, she’d be almost as old as I am now. If not that, then what? Time travel? Okay, so assume I went back in time, how would I ever convince that person I was her? I’m sure she’d think I was a relation, perhaps a great-aunt or some such because I did at one time bear a distinct resemblance to my mother.

I remember when I was young not ever actually thinking that old people were forever old, but I somehow presumed it. I knew people grew older, but it just seemed to me, in that accepting way of youth, that they were old, and had always been, just as I was young, and would always be. It makes sense, I suppose — when you’re young, you can see the changes in yourself as you graduate to a new grade every year, but the older folks always looked the same. I don’t know when it struck me that old folks had once been young, that they’d lived a whole life before getting old, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen until later in my twenties or even in my thirties. (I knew people aged, of course, but old age seemed so alien to my young self that I never made the connection.)

So there my young self would be, seeing this old woman, and no way would my twenty-year old self ever believe that I was this old. Oddly, I doubt that my current self would even recognize that young self. Odder still, now that I’m old, I feel as if I’ve always been old, as if I’d never been young. I mean, I know I was, but . . . who can remember that far back? Or care? It is easier just to accept what I am today and go with that feeling rather than give credence to a past.

Which means, I suppose, that even if I could go back and tell my twenty-year old self something, there’s nothing I would wish to tell her.

As for the photo accompanying this article, I realize it’s not my twenty-year old self, but nowadays, one young age is as remote as the other.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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Paint and Palate

June 14, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Sometimes I find myself amusing. Not often because . . . well, because I’m not really amusing, and anyway, it’s hard to be amusing by yourself. But yesterday was different.

I went to a fundraiser with a friend. I’d been told about the event by the woman in charge, and I thought about going, but that’s as far as it went. It’s hard at times to break through the wall of inertia that seems to descend upon me when I spend too much time alone, to throw the thought of doing something out ahead me and following it, which is why I seldom do anything unless someone actually comes and gets me. So, when a friend said she was going and asked if I wanted to go with her, I jumped on the chance. Inertia overcome!

The fundraiser was a Paint and Palate event. (Oh, funny! I just got the pun: Palate? Palette? Cute.) The goal was to have fun, paint, nibble on charcuterie, and help support a local school activity. I’d done such an event years ago where an artist had us paint a moon-lit scene while she showed us every step of the way. I could do that; I have no real artistic ability, the kind where you paint what you see, either in your mind or in a photo, but for that one day it was fun pretending to be an artist.

This event wasn’t like that. A canvas, palette, paint and brushes were supplied, as well as photos of possibilities, but the decision of what to paint and how to paint it was up to us.

“I can’t do that,” I told my friend. “All I know how to do is paint by number.”

Those words gave me an idea that cracked me up. Paint by number! Or paint numbers. Sort of like the opposite of a paint-by-number kit where you paint over the number. Well, I painted the numbers over the paint.

Yep, sometimes I amuse myself.

More than that, since my painting didn’t take all that long, I had plenty of time to nibble on the lovely snacks provided — watermelon, kiwi, cheese, crackers, salami, cookies — while others painted more realistic scenes. A lot of talent in that room! Luckily for me, my talent for cleverness — sort of — gave me a chance to participate without feeling too out of place.

I really liked that blank canvas. Maybe someday I’ll get some for myself just to play with. Or even better, the next time one of these events is scheduled, I should just go. As long as someone comes and gets me.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

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