Elijah Cummings Always Knew Our Time Is Short. Just Look at His First Speech on the House Floor.

From Esquire

In the end, we only have a minute. Nobody knew that better than Elijah Cummings, the towering chairman of the House Oversight Committee who died overnight at the age of 68. Despite many of today's headlines, the Baltimore congressman was more than some character in Donald Trump's dark and dangerous American story. In 1962, the Baltimore Sun tells us, he was part of a group of African-American kids who sought to integrate the Riverside Park pool in South Baltimore, only to be greeted by white mobs who taunted them and threw rocks. But we are all victims of time's ruthless circumstances, and when the histories are written—assuming we make it that far—Cummings' legacy will be intertwined with the half-mad president who held office at the minute he took the helm of a powerful congressional committee. In that minute, after all, Cummings was called on by God or history or fate to defend the American republic.

In recent years, Cummings seemed particularly aware of the ephemeral nature of his existence, and the mandate we all have to seize the minute we're given. More than once, he could be heard discussing the prospect of "dancing with the angels," including when he spoke with the president in 2017: "Mr. President," he recalled saying, "you’re now 70-something, I’m 60-something. Very soon you and I will be dancing with the angels. The thing that you and I need to do is figure out what we can do—what present can we bring to generations unborn?" This is not, unfortunately, a line of reasoning that comports with the president's worldview. But it was worth a shot.

In an achingly compassionate address to Michael Cohen, when the president's former fixer testified before Cummings' committee, the angels came up again. "When we're dancing with the angels, the question will be asked: in 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact? Did we stand on the sidelines and say nothing?"

In truth, Cummings new from the jump that you're given a minute and it's up to you to do something with it. Just look at his first-ever speech on the floor of the United States House of Representatives shortly after he took office in 1996.

"Just a tiny little minute, but eternity is in it." Cummings was constantly aware that his own time was short, but if he used it well his minute would reverberate through the generations. That is the mindset of a statesman, and a great man of history. If there's any justice remaining in the world Cummings has now departed, he will be granted those distinctions in the great reckoning to come. He only had a minute, it was forced on him and he did not choose it, but he used it. Elijah Cummings, dead at 68.

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