My thoughts go to a night in 1944

[tavernier]

when my grandparents first realized that come morning they would have to pack their most beloved small treasures into a couple of suitcases and board a train to take them far away from their home and country of birth, ancestry and heritage.

The losses we face tonight are different... we are allowed to remain in our homes, but we have lost much as well... a certain innocence and trust in our country and leadership ... a confidence of the security we take for granted, be it a guarantee that a sports game couldn’t possibly ever be canceled, or that Mickey Mouse has power over any germ or virus... or perhaps the dream that we can protect our family, young and old, because we are Americans.

My grandparents never returned to their home country... wars and walls kept them out. They never saw their first born son again.

I believe this is the first time in my 73 years of life when I might have a tiny inkling of how it feels when your entire world truly turns upside down.

[Big Blue Marble]

1. Your words so well

capture the emotions that many of are feeling. Your sentiments bring tears to my eyes.
Our world is always so vulnerable, yet we live as if it is permanent.

We are now living the fragility of life in its fullness.

[gopiscrap]

2. wow

[mountain grammy]

3. K&R with tears in my eyes..

[MLAA]

4. You really strike a chord

[greenjar_01]

5. It will be "Before COVID-19" and "After COVID-19" to be sure

For those who survive.

[Dem2theMax]

6. Just like before 9-11 and after 9-11.

I remember on that day all I could think of was the children born from that day forward would never know the world the way I knew it. And it was heartbreaking to realize that.

I am hoping that somehow some good comes out of this. People have died, people are going to die, people are losing their jobs, businesses are shutting down, people are losing money right and left.

And we have to yell far and wide, and point fingers at Trump so everyone understands that he and his administration caused this. They didn't cause the virus, but they caused the chaos that ensued from it because they chose to do nothing.

[Dem2theMax]

7. tavernier, your post really touched my heart.

I too have been thinking back, to the days of the depression and what my parents had to have experienced.

They passed away in 2012 and I am so grateful they are not here to live through this. I'm grateful they don't have to live through Trump! My extremely Democratic father would really wonder why he spent three years in the Pacific being shot at, only to have a wannabe dictator running the country all these years later.

Anyway, it does give us pause to think of what our families went through in the past. All in all, I think we've had it a bit easier than earlier Generations. Now it's our turn to experience some of what they went through, even though it's in a different way.

[secondwind]

8. Beautifully said, and how true !!

[crickets]

9. .

[moniss]

10. I remember

elders talking about being terrified as they or loved ones tried to get permission and papers to leave through various countries early on. Many didn't make it.

[Leghorn21]

11. tavernier -

thank you

[denbot]

12. In '44 my maternal grandfather was in the Pacific, along w/my paternal uncle.

May I ask where your grandparents were?

[tavernier]

14. My grandparents were in Latvia.

They, along with my mother, became refugees, escaping Stalin’s bloodbath in the Baltics. They fled to Germany. Their son, my uncle, was a high school principle and therefore arrested and sent to Siberia. My father was also Latvian, a very young man conscripted into the German army. He was shot his first month in and sent to a hospital in Germany where he met my mother who worked at the hospital. They married and I was born in 1946. We immigrated to America in 1950.

[denbot]

15. My wife is of Irish/Latvian stock.

Her grandfather came from Latvia early last century, pre WWI I think..

[ChazInAz]

16. Hungary, 1956

I went back, once.

[tavernier]

19. I visited the Baltics, my mom and dad's home towns.

Beautiful country, many forests, white birch trees, lovely old architecture in the cities. But the Russian government destroyed so much.

[Initech]

13. There's going to be riots over this.

Hell we already had one on Wednesday. We are truly in uncharted territory here.

[blaze]

17. My Latvian coworker

I worked with a woman, Asta, for about 9 years. She was a very private person.

But around the time of the D-Day 50th anniversary, one day at lunch, she opened up for the one and only time about her childhood to myself and another coworker.

She was an 8yo refugee. She told us about escaping on a train that would stop periodically when the planes flew overhead. Everyone would run as fast as they could away from the train (in case it got bombed) and then board again. She told us how the local kids taught her how to run in the fields (barefooted) to prevent the stiff grasses from puncturing her feet. She told us how she almost froze to death (which she welcomed because it was the first time she could remember not being cold) and her mother kept waking her up. She told us how her mother spent a full day walking to another village to find a loaf of bread so they could celebrate her birthday.

I think about Asta often, but don't often share.

Seemed like a good time to though.

[tavernier]

18. Thank you for sharing this.

For me it was easier since I was born after those days. But I’ve heard many horror stories.