a lifetime

Sir you have 90 seconds.

Sweat gathered on his brow threatening to sting his eyes and the dampness on his spine trickled down the small of his back. His stomach was tight with nerves which his deep breaking did little to calm.

Nothing in his vast career of public speaking had prepared him for this moment.

Opposition was stifling, and yet the necessity of the task before him gave him the resolve he needed to say what they were not ready to hear.

The title “Great Communicator” seemed to mock him now. So many powerful words had he uttered with passion, purpose and so much success had they reaped for him. Now what kind of communicator would he become?

He’d never forget the moment he asked Nancy to marry him.

Personal moments like that meant nothing to the public. They’re trite, experienced by everyone, nothing individual or extraordinary.

But nothing he’d ever said after that had affected his life in as impactful a way.

Similarly, those words exchanged at one in the morning in the darkness of the kitchen with his son Ron were the some of the ones he remembered most vividly.

His public speeches had immortalized him:

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth,

or we will sentence them to take the first stop into a thousand years of darkness.

 If we fail, at least our children and our children’s children say of us

we justified our brief moment here.

We did all that could be done.”

~October 27, 1964

“No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as

the will and moral courage of free men and women.”

~January 20, 1981

Inspiring, persuasive, and well spoken, this is who he was; what the world would remember him for. Posterity would remember his legacy as a world leader, and then after many generations, they would still remember the words he said.

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down

this wall.”

 ~June 12, 1987

 And as memorable and profound as his words may be, they were not the ones he cherished.

More important to him were the words that had been spoken to him. The lectures he’d received as a young boy from his father now shone as a beam from a lighthouse, guiding him in the dark of night through the treacherous sea of life. Later in life, while sitting over countless cups of tea, his mentors had imparted to him decades of wisdom gained through their experiences.

Stored in his mind were thousands of secrets.

He could never forget the look on his 9 year old brother Neil’s face that night when he admitted that he was afraid of the dark.

Then there were the secrets of national security; that never ending list of things he could tell no one, except maybe his dog Strider when no one was looking. The burden of so many secrets takes a toll on the human soul, and no friend is better suited to keep a secret.

Now everything was FADING TO BLACK.

His mind, that which had brought him to be the 40^th president of the United States of America, was being eaten alive.

Millions of names, faces, dates, cities,

life changing,

world changing events,

speeches,

struggles,

passions,

everything, SLOWLY FADING AWAY.

It was all still there, neatly filed away in the dark recesses of his memory.

But what good is a safe without an accurate combination?

Why have a buried treasure if there is no map?

How useful is a door without a key?

The nagging fear of the future and life without context is what scared him the most. His Alzheimer’s diagnosis was threatening to gut him of his pride, his self worth, his dignity, his everything.

What are you without a recollection of your past and a hope, a plan, for your future?

He’d been a person of deadlines and appointments all his life, scheduled to the minute sometimes. His past was studded with history that filled the textbooks of the world, and now his future, his future yawned ahead of him like an ominous train tunnel with no end. It was a black and unknown void that filled his soul with fear.

 Alzheimer’s would make him timeless in his last days. To live in the moment, that is what we are told to do, right? Don’t worry about the past; don’t get caught up in the hopes of the future; enjoy your life and live in the moment. That is the essence of Alzheimer’s. It’s having the knowledge of the moment and nothing else.

Not to be outdone by the imminent peril of his death sentence, the Great Communicator had yet a few more words to share with the world in his final speech.

He was snapped out of his musings when he was called by the man in the gray suit,

“Sir, you may take the stage now.”

“In closing, let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great

honor of allowing me to serve as your president.

When the Lord calls me home, whenever that day may be, I will leave with the

greatest love for this country of ours and

eternal optimism for its future.

I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.

There was a tear creeping down his rosy cheek, and his voice caught on a well of emotion, but he maintained his composure as he uttered these powerful words of hope

…I know that for America there will

always be a bright dawn ahead.”

~November 5, 1994

Former US President Ronald Reagan, The Great Communicator

Disclaimer: As with all of my writing, this piece is purely fictional with bits of historical fact scattered throughout. The quotes are cited, everything else is from my imagination and written for the purpose of raising important questions and ideas.