Warren Kinsella, a well-known Liberal who — among many other things — wrote speeches for Jean Chretien, is going through hell right now. As followers of his blog have learned, someone close to him is fighting serious illness.
Something he wrote in yesterday’s entry struck me:
I was driving back from Kingston, listening to Radiohead. For a few minutes, there, I forgot about what had brought me to Kingston in the first place. Then, remembering, I felt guilty for having enjoyed something, however briefly.
That’s a sadly familiar feeling for those of us who’ve been down this road. I travelled it with my parents last fall and winter, and it’s a hard, hard trip.
Something else resonated even more strongly: how uninterested he is right now in the game-playing around the upcoming election:
What about health care, I felt like asking someone in the convenience store line-up. What about waiting lists and R&D? That’s what I care about.
For me it was homecare: how difficult it was at first to access, and then what a profound difference it made when Bancroft’s range of caring professionals and volunteers came on board. (Props to the Victorian Order of Nurses and Noel in particular.) That’s now my personal hot-button issue.
Warren and I crossed paths at Carleton, and although we haven’t met since then, our lives have followed an oddly parallel path, albeit in different parties. If you have a spare moment today, you’d be doing me a favour if you give Warren and his folks a kind thought and your hopes that things turn out for the best.
