Reagan’s ‘long twilight’ ends

Former President Ronald Reagan died today at the age of 93. Not long after I read about it, I called my mother.

“Did you hear the news?”

“What.”

Pause. “Ronald Reagan.”

That’s all I needed to say. She got it. “When did it happen?” She started to cry, and then apparently self-conscious, she laughed a little at herself. “I don’t know why I’m crying…”

“Yeah. I’m a little sad too.”

I didn’t offer up an explanation for her tearful reaction. I didn’t need to, because it was plain to both of us. Her father, who passed away several years ago, had Alzheimer’s disease, as Reagan did. I remember my grandfather, once so active and articulate, had slowly settled into a condition in which he stopped speaking or remembering who we were. It was a confusing and painful experience for all of us. Reagan’s death–the end of a “long twilight,” as the Post puts it–stirs up many of those memories and a sense of empathy for his family.

Politics aside: I was just three years old when Reagan was first elected president, and 11 at the end of his second term, so to be honest he is just background in the blur of my early childhood, a series of fleeting images. (I’m sure I will have ample opportunity to be enlightened on the highs and lows of his presidency in the days to come.) But still he is the president I first became aware of and grew up with. Again, politics aside, his public service defined an era in the United States, and in some small way, a period of my life as well.