Last wishes
Posted : October 31, 2004 at 4:03 pm [America/Los_Angeles]
[via DailyKos: Last Wishes]
Dear Senator Kerry,
One of your most steadfast supporters from the moment she learned about your bid for the presidency was my mother Joan Friedman. For most of her life, my mother’s time was taken with raising a family and working, although she was a life long democrat. The first time she volunteered to work for the Democratic Party was during the Clinton campaign. She was sixty-seven years old. She worked tirelessly for the Clinton campaign and because of it won the State Democratic Party’s “Volunteer of the Year Award.”
Even during the meteoric rise of Howard Dean she supported your candidacy. She believed that you were more presidential than the other candidates. She once told my husband not to let me know, that she was going to vote for you regardless of my support for Howard Dean at the time.
My mother died, from complications arising from End Stage Emphysema, on October 23, 2004 at 12:20 in the afternoon. She was 79 years young. Before she died she had two wishes. Her first wish was that before she died she wanted to be sure that she voted for you. The second wish was private. Although filling out the ballot was a slow and painful process she would not stop until she had completed the early ballot.
Your presidency was so important to her that as she lay dying she wanted to be surrounded by Kerry bumper stickers, Kerry buttons, and other Kerry paraphernalia. She believed that every vote counts and that if the America she loved, based on democratic principles and individual protections, were not just slogans, but reflect core beliefs of the American people, you must be the next president of the United States.
Two days prior to my mother’s death she mailed her early ballot and was deeply satisfied that she was able to do the right thing. It was the last document she would sign. Her priest was with her in her final moments. She passed peacefully and with great dignity satisfied that even in the end she fulfilled her responsibility to this great country.
My mother had the deepest respect for you, Senator Kerry, so please do your best to become not just the next president of the U.S., but the best president, committed to the ideals of our republic and committed to all of the American people.
Sincerely,
My Mother’s daughter
- Anand
Category: United (or not) State of American Politics 2004 |
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