Saddest story ever

That this war could be the backdrop to my own death disturbs me greatly.

The horror is visual and visceral as brought in bytes and bits bounced off satellites. It really has me rattled.

I was diagnosed five years ago with Lewy body dementia, a degenerative brain disease characterized by memory loss and tremors.

I’m trembling right now. I feel the whole world is trembling. Not in fear but rage, and sorrow.

For some reason I got this ‘legendary’ Ernest Hemingway story stuck in my mind. Challenged to write the shortest story ever, Hemingway apparently came up with:

For Sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

Legend has it, though Snopes doubts it — Hemingway jotted those six words down on a beer napkin and walked out with $10 from each member of the group.

Baby shoes, kids-sized shoes, adult-sized shoes. There’ll be closets full of these shoes in Russia and Ukraine — some never to be worn again.

I’m thousands of miles away but I can’t shake the shakes and the disbelief. And it makes me so sad on many levels. I feel like I’m leaving a world for my daughters that is so messed up.

It’s always been like this, you say? Wars, plagues, exploitation, greed and discrimination. Greed? Did I mention greed? Maybe I’m the guy who keeps beating his head against the wall expecting a better result. Some tiny shred of evidence progress is being made in human history.

Instead, we see and hear, through our gadgets, teenagers lining up to get their very own Kalashnikov and an ill-fitted helmet. We see brigades of men and women bustling in a room where they pour gasoline into beer bottles and stuff it with a cloth. A Molotov cocktail.

We see daughters and sons and mothers crying for their fathers at the train station as evacuation was not allowed for men over 18.

If challenged, I, too, can come up with a six-word story.

For sale, broken heart, never mended.