On a Sad Note

No matter how you feel today, your thoughts and prayers should go out to the Kucinich family for their loss of their brother, Perry. It is a difficult thing to lose a sibling especially when he is younger and I do hope that Dennis is finding consolation in knowing that we cannot control what happens to people even when they reside so deeply in our hearts.
With this sadness in mind, I have been thinking about all the good that the Kuciniches do as a couple and how they have affected people and their attitudes towards politics and towards the needs of the people politicians are elected to represent.
There was an excellent article in Huffington Post by Matt Simon about a visit that Elizabeth Kucinich made in lieu of Dennis' ability to be there. He had returned to DC to vote on the war funding issue and she had gone in his place to see a young man who many in the campaign have visited. He is a very young man living in a nursing home with MD and working diligently for the legalization of marijuana. Eleziabeth spent a good deal of time with this young man, Clayton Holton, and listened to what his needs are and what his story is all about.
Compassion is a word that gets thrown about as if it were just a commodity. Or maybe something you can order up on command, when it is needed. But compassion is a way of life and it extends to everyone no matter who or what they are or what they may be suffering with or from. We had to swallow every time someone referred to GWB as a compassionate conservative as if someone hadn't just made that up in order to give him a tag line that might mean something to someone who doesn't think being compassionate is something you work at.
Looking through the resume of GWB it is hard to come up with an instance of true compassion in his past. I can't help but think of one of the things that galvanized Cindy Sheehan against this president was the way he talked to the families of service men and women who had died. It was as if she could sense in his lack of presence any of the qualities one associates with someone capable of experiencing someone else's loss.
Elizabeth Kucinich seems quite qualified to be labelled as compassionate. It is in her resume and it is in her ability to sit and listen to someone who wants to tell her about him or herself and describe the kind of pain they are in whether physical or mental or spiritual.
With all of that wordiness, I guess I am saying, thank God that Elizabeth is with Dennis now while he mourns the loss of his brother and carries on his way to the presidency.
With all the labeling of who is and who is not compassionate based on their own personal history, it is easy to forget what the word really means and where it comes from.
I wish the whole Kucinich family a recovery from the pain they are in.