Marching John McCain Home

Jacob and his 30 lb. carp, caught a couple of years ago. Now that's fishing!

Rough night at my house. Sophie’s shrill bark awakened me about 2:30. She saw a critter in the yard and demanded to be let out to deal with it. My voice was no softer as I yelled that she was not going to go out in the night after a critter. I distracted her, I hoped, with a treat. But Sophie was offended, and she does not suffer in silence—scratching on the carpet, little thumps and bumps, just enough to keep one awake. Finally, at six a.m., outright barking. I let her out, she came right back in, and settled down.

So I was almost as tired as the McCain family this morning as I watched the ceremony. It occurred to me that family—and the late Senator—gave us a great gift by sharing their grief so publicly. My heart broke more than once this week as Meghan McCain struggled to keep her composure—and sometimes lost. I loved the image of her holding her grandmother’s hand—we’ll never know who was comforting who. And I too had tears when Cindy McCain nearly fell apart during the singing of “Danny Boy”—my mom’s favorite song, and it always brings tears to my eyes.

We’ve had four days of public mourning. Surely it would have been easier on the family to have a small, more private funeral in Arizona. But they knew what the late Senator wanted, and they knew their obligation to the country. Everything all week was done with class and grace—the music magnificent, the eulogies eloquent.

And in those eulogies, from Meghan’s to President Obama, the words were of unity, of shared values, of reaching beyond ourselves to serve a greater cause. In many ways, today’s service was not about Senator McCain—it was about the United States of America. It was, subtly spoken, a call to action to those of us who will go to the polls in November. I hope and believe the country heard it as such.

Sophie slept through the whole thing. Bless her heart, she’s exhausted.

Jacob has gone to his other grandparents for the weekend. When he came out to say goodbye, I asked if he as excited about going fishing with Poppy. His reaction was “so-so.” “We didn’t catch anything last time,” he explained. So I posed that age-old question: is it the catch or is it the act of fishing that matters. “The catch,” he said swiftly. “That’s why you fish.” Since he is a catch-and-release fisherman that puzzled me (his grandmother would never clean and cook his trophies). I guess we need to wait for a bit more maturity before he sees the value in the art of fishing. It’s not all about the catch.

Meanwhile, tonight I will watch the NBC Special on McCain. You know that old saying that we are all, “Just walking each other home”? Sometimes you hear it as singing someone home. A friend posted about the music at Aretha Franklin’s funeral and ended simply with, “She’s home now.” I think what the nation did today was to march John McCain home with lock-step military precision. He would like that.