The night before my father, Ronald Reagan, died, I heard his breathing – heavy and gaunt. There’s nothing quite like a sportsman riding a horse, building fences on his pasture, building jumps out of old telephone poles, or chopping down brush along horse trails. Or about the man who raised his voice to the cloudy sky and said, Gorbachev, tear down this wall. ”
Time and history fold inside me, distant memories somersaulting with more recent realities – his ten-year journey into the dark world of Alzheimer’s disease and abandoning the well-worn paths of childhood dissatisfaction. My determination to forge a new path. To be honest, I was determined to grow up from the inside out.
But I still remember what it felt like to be his child and how attentive he was to America and its issues made me jealous.
Politics sat between us at the dinner table long before my father ran for office. The conversation went as expected. Big government was the problem, the devil, and the one America needed to guard against. I hated those conversations. I wanted to talk about the boy who bullied me on the school bus, not about government overreach.
Eventually, I came to hate this country, which claimed so much of him. But today, what I will miss most is his love for America. Tears welled up in his eyes as “America the Beautiful” played, but it wasn’t just sentimentality. He knew how fragile democracy is and how easily it can be destroyed. He often told me about how Germany descended into dictatorship, the largest form of government.
I really wish I could ask him about the brink we’re teetering on right now, and how America can get out of the quagmire of outbursts of anger and hatred. How can we break the cycle of actual and verbal violence? How can we overcome the quagmire of divisions that separate us and lead elected officials to heckle the president at the State of the Union? How can we overcome partisan resentment? When his father was shot, Chip O’Neill, then Speaker of the House and always one of his father’s most devoted political opponents, came to the hospital room, knelt in prayer with his father, and recited Psalm 23. . Today such an act seems impossible.
So what would my father say about the decline of civility and the ominous future of our democracy? I doubt he would mention his party’s front-runner at all. I think he will focus on the people cheering on that candidate at his rally. He would point out to them that dictatorships were not created by one person. They are created by all the people who stand in line and say yes.
In 1967, after my father became governor of California, we went to the governor’s mansion, a creaky old house on a busy street. I was 15 years old and unhappy about being the governor’s daughter. I felt helpless and scared. So I sneaked away from everyone, climbed two flights of stairs to the dome of the building, and looked out of one of the windows at the crowd gathered on the sidewalk. From a distance, they looked mercifully small. Suddenly one of them noticed me on top and the strangers started waving. I remember immediately retreating, sitting on the dusty floor, crying as the scales fell from my eyes.
Thirty-seven years later, as I drove by in a convoy carrying my father’s casket, I saw another group of strangers crowding along the sidewalk and gathering on a freeway overpass. This time I was healed by their presence. America and I have had a rocky relationship, but America’s pause over the past few days has eased some of the thorniest parts of my grief.
So we whisper to those who have passed away that we wish we could tell them that we have grown, learned, and changed. My father believed in a world beyond this one, so maybe he could hear my whispers. Perhaps he sees a sad mess in the country he loved. And some of the tears I shed for America may be his.
Ms. Davis is the author of the forthcoming book Dear Mom and Dad: Letters about Family, Memory, and the America We Once Knew.
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