Bernie Madoff and the Grim Reaper

I left my monthly appointment at the pain management clinic last Wednesday afternoon and climbed into our old dented mini-van feeling slightly defeated. The spinal procedures had not worked (a lot of pain for nothing) and I am left with few options except more medication at this point. I guess it's fair to say I might have been a bit grumpy, then, when I turned on the radio to listen to Talk of the Nation on my drive home.

The show that day was called "What It's Like to Lost Everything." The central focus was the whole Bernie Madoff debacle, and then they branched out to people who had "lost everything" in other ways: losing a job, natural disasters, fires. It was heartbreaking to hear people tell their stories about waking up one day to learn that everything they owned was no more.

But the first guest on the show, successful writer of books about dieting and food Geenen Roth, said something that had me worked up enough that here I am, more than a week later, blogging about it (it's in the first three minutes of the show if you want to take a listen). Like far too many others, Roth had to answer a phone call wherein she was informed that her entire savings of 30 years had disappeared and Bernie Madoff, the man in whom she had trusted her fortune, was in handcuffs. Roth had written a piece for salon.com entitled "Fleeced by Madoff" wherein she outlines her sense of loss and acceptance; the article landed her the guest spot on Talk of the Nation.

The host asked her to comment on the fact that there is a contingent of the population who is dismissive of the loss of wealth for those in the upper tax brackets. I'm glad he brought it up, because I think it's important to note that even though many of Madoff's victims were mulit-millionaires, the loss they face is still life-altering, and psychologically it can do a lot of damage. Just because I don't have enough to invest in hedge funds or, let's face it, any stocks whatsoever, doesn't mean that I don't feel sympathy for those who did have that ability and then lost their fortunes. While Ms. Roth seemed to agree with me on this point, her rationale was a doozy.

First, she made a point of saying that although she might have come to a point of great wealth and success, she wasn't always there. She claims to have been homeless for a time in her life. Homeless, you say? Yes. And by homeless she means--and she says this--she didn't have enough money for her own place, so she worked as a live-in nanny.

So live-in nannies are homeless? Try living under a bridge in January for a few nights, Ms. Roth, an then tell me if you were homeless as a nanny.

Here comes the kicker. She said, and I quote, "All of us are going through some kind of loss." She mentions that those without the amount of wealth she lost in Madoff's scheme who had money in other stocks have lost a third of their wealth because of the decline of the market. Good point. Next: "Those who didn't have enough money to put anything in anything are also experiencing losses everyday, the way we all do: the loss of someone you love, the sudden death of someone you love, an illness. . . "

Um, did she just compare the loss of her millions to the loss of a human being? Yes. Yes, she did. Apparently I should understand how it feels to lose millions, even though I have never had a penny to invest, because my father died from brain cancer when he was only 56. Pretty much the same thing.

A question, Ms. Roth: do you ever have those dreams? You know, the ones where your lost money suddenly appears at a bus terminal or in your doorway and your heart catches for an instant with hope that it was inexplicably risen from the dead? Do you wake from those dreams flooded with grief because all you want to do is hold your money's hand one more time and make sure it knew how much you loved it?

Do you ever look at a picture of you and your money together in better days, when it was still with you, and break into a spasm of tears the way I did last night when I saw this one:

I didn't think so.