Thanks, Mr. President

You would forget your head if it wasn’t attached to your shoulders...was a common accusation hurled at me by my sainted mother. I was always dashing off to school and leaving some vital thing at the house. More often my forgetfulness centered around some chore she had ordered me to complete which I had left undone. Selective amnesia, she called it. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have a powerful enough memory. I could recite the starting lineup of the 1969 Mets in game six of the World Series, backwards...still can. You need someone to remember the name of some obscure character from Twelfth Night, or if you’re having trouble recalling the name of the winning general from the Battle of Malvern Hill, I’m your guy. In other words, when it comes to useless mind-cluttering minutia and inane trivia, I’ve got a mind like a steel trap. But if you need to remember something consequential like a password, or where you left your car keys, or that 10:30 doctor’s appointment? Not so much. Turning 60 recently hasn’t helped in the mental acuity department, since now I instinctively blame the calendar for every error I make. But, yesterday, I found encouragement from the oddest source...Abraham Lincoln. In my Memorial Day readings, I stumbled across...this:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln.

At age 56, a mere six months prior to being assassinated, and having endured perhaps the most brutal three years of any presidency before or since, Abraham Lincoln turned out this stunningly beautiful bit of writing. In three short paragraphs, four sentences, he demonstrated for the entire nation what presidential leadership looks like. Over 150 years later, his words still stir the heart and soul. The eloquence. The epic tenderness. This is unrivaled writing. To read it, even now, is to be transported through time and space and dropped in the middle of an unparalleled tragedy, and to feel the freshness of the open wound that was the American Civil War. 

So, reading something this profoundly beautiful, written by a man under unimaginable stress, gives me great hope that whatever issues I might be dealing with can and will be overcome.