Tomorrow and tomorrow

 

Someone’s Dayplanner from the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.

July 14, 2026.

There has been much ink spilled and splattered regarding the sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham. If you spend more than ten minutes per day on social media, you’ve had to duck the knives, block a million new people, and crawl back into your hole until the storm passes.

In many ways, the armed conflict perfectly reflects the current, very broken status of our country’s conversation. Rob Reiner dies, the right attacks. Lindsey Graham, the left attacks. Anyone who dares to remember him as the senator who tried to work bipartisan pre-Trump? Even on matters such as the environment? Both left and right attack. It’s sheer insanity.

And that doesn’t even address the wide range of conspiracy theories.

What stuck in my mind among the endless stream of Graham remembrances: His two final phone calls with Margaret Brennan. He told her he believed that his efforts, cosponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), to obtain the president’s support for Ukraine were finally going to become reality. He and his colleague—he asked that she credit Blumenthal as well—had legislation in sight that would put pressure on India and China to refrain from purchasing Russian oil. And fund Ukrainian efforts.

He mentioned to Brennan that he wasn’t feeling well. She wondered if he shouldn’t see a doctor sooner rather than later. He brushed her off, saying, ‘After the Sunday shows.’ After the Sunday shows. He had to get the message out that public and bipartisan support for Ukraine was on the way.

But then, of course, there were no Sunday shows. The message he had hoped to spread on those Sunday shows was preempted by a president focused on legislation that would make it more difficult for people to vote. That would disenfranchise large numbers of Americans. Americans who don’t vote like the president wants them to vote.

Graham’s anticipated message regarding support for Ukraine was suffocated on-air. Coverage of his trip to Kyiv was obliterated by a man who ensured that the Ukraine dispatch was not heard. Yes, the president Graham supported.

But it’s that “after the Sunday shows,” the tomorrow that Lindsey Graham anticipated that would not come, that hits me. He was seven months younger than I, and exactly one year younger than a friend to me and many of my high school friends, who died even younger than Graham. Randy died in his forties.

Today’s post was going to be about Norris Dam State Park on the Clinch River in Tennessee. But while organizing photos for that essay, I ran across pictures from Oklahoma City about a week earlier, way back in April 2022.

On April 19, 1995, well over five hundred federal employees showed up for work. Many dropped their kids off at the daycare on the ground floor. They started their day, same as any other day. Employees of the Social Security Administration, HUD, DEA, ATF, Veterans Affairs, Secret Service, and military recruiters did their job. No fanfare.

Doors opened to the public. People stood in long lines at the SSA office. It was a normal day. It was a normal day. It was a normal day.

And 168 of those normal people, who had plans, families, important jobs, 168 of those people did not live past 9:30 a.m. Nineteen children did not live to grow up, to get married, to have kids of their own. Another 684 individuals were badly injured, their lives never the same. Countless families were forever broken. Oklahoma City would never be the same.

We have no guarantees that we will see tomorrow. It does not matter whether we are working on a project that excites us, or whether we are struggling through one of life’s valleys. We may not count on having tomorrow to finish, much less having tomorrow to do what is right.

Graham may have counted on having a post-Trump era to shapeshift back to the semi-bipartisan Senator he was during John McCain’s lifetime. He erred in believing that he would have any sort of tomorrow at all.

“We come here to remember those who were killed, those who survived and those changed forever. May all who leave here know the impact of violence. May this memorial offer comfort, strength, peace, hope and serenity.”