Being Walter Cronkite

At a time when I really need to be focused on the future, it is all too easy to get bogged down trying to make sense of the craziness that has been the past year. It as been filled with events I couldn't control and persistent efforts to navigate hostile terrain. I find myself longing for logic to prevail and a steadfast guide to lead me through the maze.

Walter Cronkite was the voice of reason and sanity in my life for as far back as I can remember. At least from the time I was able to sit still long enough to listen to anyone. His gentle solemn words were my earliest education. He resonated a sense of safety in a world I knew was in chaos but lacked the resources and maturity to really understand. When everything else was unpredictable, he was constant. He was punctual and always returned without fail.

Prior to Walter taking the CBS anchor seat in 1962, we watched Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC. In fairness The Huntley-Brinkley Report is more likely responsible for piquing my interest in news and world affairs in the late 50s and early 60s, but thinking back it is Walter’s face I see and voice I hear recalling the early Sputnik launches, Castro taking over Cuba, JFK defeating Nixon for the presidency and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

Walter walked me through those excruciating two weeks in October, when we all thought the world would surely end during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was Cronkite who tearfully broke the news that John Kennedy had been assassinated less than 12 miles from my 5^th grade classroom. It was his words I believed when I hadn’t been able to believe my own eyes.

He narrated the chaotic political landscape from the seemingly endless Vietnam War to the violence at home as race riots intensified. And again removed his horn-rimmed glasses to gather his composure to tell me that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated only to face me two months later with the assassination of Robert Kennedy. We celebrated Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon in 1969, an event that defied articulation, even for Walter. And so it went until his retirement in 1981.

I grew up and moved on to explore a wide range of news sources, but my heart will always belong to him just for being Walter Cronkite. “And that’s the way it is.”

Copyright (c) 2011 Rebecca Hertz

The monster's ugly head

I have wasted months feeling guilty because of the pain I feel everyday. I felt like my experience wasn’t as bad as what so many other have suffered, that I have no right to be in pain or acknowledge how I feel. So I push through. I go to work and try to do my best, but I’m not at my best and I realized that just tonight.

I was watching a television show where a young woman went through a horrific accident, so much worse than mine. And I found myself weeping, almost on the verge of hysterics, as I saw her go through the same treatments I experienced. What I saw wasn’t the lovely young surgeon, Torres. It was me hearing the words to ‘I think I’ll join the Army’ – it was me driving with my daughters to my mother’s funeral singing as loud as I could to the radio to block out the grief I felt. And that’s when I realized that what happened to me is valid. I felt all those emotions and fears and when the adrenaline dissipated and I suddenly felt cold and sleepy, I thought I might die, but I didn’t care. I didn’t have the ability to comprehend what was happening.

So today, when I don’t think I can make it through the day because of pain or I find that I have to pull the car to the side of the road because I can’t breath for waiting for the impact, it’s real. What I experienced may not be as devastating as what others have suffered, but it’s real.

The cold sweats and screams in the night are no less valid because they aren’t as bad as someone else’s.

It’s evidently going to take some time for me to recover not just physically but emotionally. I thought I was good, but apparently there is work yet to do. It is going to take more than a few weeks of physical therapy for me to get past this. A single incident that has revealed where my many contingency plans to protect myself in any situation can’t protect me. There is no plan good enough and no support system strong enough. It all comes down to me and I have to be strong enough. Strong enough to ask for help when I need it and to learn that I am not the invincible character that I see myself as and see me as I really am - strong enough to admit my own weaknesses.

It kind of takes the ego down a notch when you realize that at the end of the day, you don’t have all the answers, you aren’t immortal. In a flash it all changes.

It’s odd that a television show should somehow reveal all of this to me right now. Especially after I have worked so hard to create this impenetrable wall around myself. Every morning, I tell myself I can do it. I can function and ignore the pain and be my best, but it’s a façade of my own creation.

I have always believed I can be whatever I want to be - that my success or failure is of my own making and I still believe that. But what I have learned is that no matter how hard I try, I cannot push all the hurt and fear down far enough to overcome it. I have learned that those tears and anguish don’t come out of nowhere and they have to be dealt with or they won’t ever go away.

I have a lot of work to do on myself and for myself. All of these bumps in the road are a part of life and they make us stronger. But they won’t be ignored. They will keep resurfacing until we face them, put them to rest and finally find peace.

Copyright (c) 2011 Rebecca Hertz