LiveWire

**Bumped Up From TAM Wire. Posted By naga5**

My co-workers and I decided to go to the Reagan Library for Nancy Reagan’s viewing after work. As fate would have it, my last patient cancelled and we drove to the shuttle pick up parking area. What a remarkable cross section of America that stood in line with us.

In front of us, there was a Hispanic family. They kept to themselves, keeping the two girls entertained as they patiently waited for the line to move. Behind us were some new local residents to Simi Valley who were originally from Chicago. One woman said she waited in line for five hours for President Reagan’s viewing but they had buses running every five minutes then and the line seemed to move fast. This line was a little slower.

They both remarked that the beautiful Southern California weather made the waiting more palatable. Farther up the line was a man dressed up as a leprechaun-a full on leprechaun with a green suit, a green hat and a red beard. Off in the distance, I heard a man saying that he was a Democrat and still was, but he was there because the only time he voted Republican was for Ronald Reagan and he was there to pay his respect to Nancy.

As a shuttle bus off loaded passengers, an older black couple slowly walked off to find their car. The emotion in the shuttle area was one of individual American joy- not joy like we were happy, but joy like we were all singly blessed by God. Some were solemn, some were smiling. Some wore suits, some wore T-shirts. But we all were Americans, products of the Reagan Revolution. The President trusted the people to make good decisions for themselves, and we were all able to live our lives as we saw fit and now mourn as we saw fit.

Mrs. Reagan’s casket was beautiful. The wood was a dark purplish brown. The finish was so brilliant that it looked like it was still wet. The rose spray on top was exquisite. It was a reflection of Nancy Reagan herself, classy and dignified. Two soldiers silently stood guard next to the casket as we quietly filed around the area. A quarter of the way around, I stopped, bent my head down, closed my eyes and prayed. I wrote something I didn’t remember on the visitor’s pages from my family and I even wrote a little something from the TAMs, but it all seemed pretty far away standing next to Mrs. Reagan.

Miyamoto Musashi said that it was important to distinguish between loss and gain in worldly matters. There is good and evil, there are saints and sinners, there is life and death. There are contrasts that help us differentiate things. The loss we feel from Mrs. Reagan’s death contrasts against the gain felt in heaven with her reunion with her husband and our President. Their lives touched us all and I feel for the better. The death of Nancy Reagan brings closure to their direct influence, but it does open the door to new influences and new choices, especially in the political arena. Pray that we choose better than we did in 2008.

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