Of Tectonic Plates and Teutonic Pates

From time to time the titles of our articles defy apparent linkage to the arena of grief, loss, and recovery.

Case in point, a recent article called, "In Your Oyster Bonnet With All the Shells Upon It," in which a young girl had mis-heard the words to the famous Easter-time song, and turned them into an ode to seafood. Ultimately, the connection to grief was the sad emotions that occur when all children finally realize that there is no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, or Tooth Fairy.

Today's title may have you wondering just how we can connect the dots from earthquakes and Mittle Europeans who would deign to head an already shaky state government, to the more sober topic of people's emotional responses to the grief-producing events in and around their lives.

Easy. Well easy for us, we do this every day. You better not try it at home.

Here's how: We define grief as the conflicting feelings caused by the change or end in anything familiar. Yes, a rather bulky definition, but practical and accurate. It's also very open-ended. As you can see it doesn't limit grief to death or even divorce, but includes all the changes that affect our lives.

One of the most overlooked of all grief issues is moving, a subject that will get an airing in this space over the next few weeks as my spouse and I move from condo to house. The move is a short distance, just 2.5 miles [I checked it last night], but an inevitable world of emotions is already erupting in us and between us.

But I progress.

Back to the shifting tectonic plates here in Southern California. Having grown up in Miami, Florida, under the lash of major hurricanes, I am personally aware of the fury Mother Nature can unleash. During my growingupski, many is the time we had to batten down the windows and doors, and stock up on essential provisions. At least with hurricanes, there's a warning and time to prepare or evacuate. In any case, the devastation to property - and often to life - can be overwhelming. People's life savings are wiped out along with a life-time of memorabilia that connect folks to their family  histories. Those are major losses, not to be taken lightly.

Here in California, there's no warning. I happened to be awake at 4:31 AM on January 17,1994, when the Northridge quake struck. I heard if first - a sound and fury that I can't really describe. In those moments, everything that I had been familiar with in my life - the safety, the trust, the illusion of control - disappeared in a few heartbeats. That event changed me. It would not technically be classified as a "near-death" experience, but it's as close as I'd like to get.

Now we are having massive political upheaval, in which the populous of Caulifohrnia - as Ahnold so poetically pronounces it - may send the ultimate vote of No Confidence to our less-then poetic Governor, whose colorless name makes a biographical statement.

Humor and partisan politics aside, it is more than fair to say that the people of California have experienced a loss of trust and a loss of confidence in their leader. That's the opening loss. Now we have a loss, whether we are self-aware or not, that the rest of the country, if not the world, is perceiving us a State of Clowns. We've become a big joke, partly because our system accidentally turned the voting privilege into a freak show with more than 135 folks popping out of one little car, just like the circus. Another loss there.

Lastly, will be the loss of either winning or losing, whichever side you're on. Even if the status manages to quo, there will have been a loss. The public trough will have experienced the loss of something in the neighborhood of $30 -$60 million dollars in underwriting the special election.  [That neighborhood is one with which I am unfamiliar - even though our new house cost more than the GNP of several Balkan countries - oh, but that's next week's column.]

The Terminator may or may not "be back," but I will.