The Lonley Top Half of the Pole

Its Flag Day this week. June 14. Thursday to be specific. It's also my grandmother's birthday. She would have been 120 years old today.

Not too long ago, I walked into my office building in the morning and noted that the flags were at half-mast.  Again.

Is it me, or are our flags at half-mast a lot more than they were when I was a kid? Maybe I just don't remember - after all I was a kid and probably devoted my energy to other pursuits. It just seems like the flags

are at half-mast an awful lot.

That day, it was in honor of the death of former First Lady, Barbara Bush. Listen. I get our national discomfort with death and dying. I understand that Barbara Bush was a significant historical figure, but she lived a whole life and died - by all accounts - on her terms. By position, flying the flag at half-mast would not be required under the US Flag Code (yup, a real thing), so the order to fly flags at half-mast had to be made by Presidential proclamation.

This isn't about Barbara Bush. It’s about how normal it’s become to see the flag at half-mast. It’s about how I look at the flag half way up its pole and think "Wow, I wonder what shitty thing happened yesterday." Against my own wishes, I feel myself becoming desensitized by our collective sensitivity. My desensitization isn't anything new - for sure. Sex, violence, recreational drugs, conspicuous consumption: I am slowly desensitizing to all of them. But the ease with which I have come to accept the latest awful thing is a problem.

I was uncomfortably relieved to find out that the flags were lowered on that day for Barbara Bush. Walking past them on my way into my office, I just assumed someone had walked into an elementary school or a gay bar or a movie theatre or a bowling alley or a church and killed a bunch of people.

I long for the day when the top half of the pole is more than just ornamental.