The world feels, and is, very fragile. People are being hit by rockets in their homes. Mothers are sewing labels into their children's clothes, listing their blood type. Of course there are also the instances of people my age and younger just dying, not even from Covid, but just dying with no warning, because life has never been perfect or predictable here and it never will be. If it were we wouldn't need Heaven. And dear Lord, how I need Heaven!
There's a wake today for one of my college professors. He passed away at 91, which you might think would be enough, but we all wanted more time with him because he was amazing. He has listed me as one of his pallbearers at the funeral tomorrow, a great honor, but a very sobering duty.
Himself and I have often taken this dear man to dinner, and had dinner at his home in happier days. I was once with him when he sideswiped a parked car and kept going. He was 90. What was I supposed to do? Luckily we, unlike many, got a chance to stand by his deathbed and say goodbye before they had to increase the morphine to ease his pain. He's home free now. My two sons, both in their twenties, are not. I wonder if they will get the chance to have a career, a family, a life, or if the whole world will explode before they get the chance. This is not a fun thought for a mother to entertain. It could, however, be reality.
Like other things about which I cannot do squat, I will place it in the hands of God who has told us over and over again "Don't worry. I've got this. I've got you." I do believe that, but I'm still having trouble sleeping, or finding the energy to do anything like writing, or reading, or cooking dinner. Because I am a human. My bone marrow is sad. Today it goes that deep.
Fight on. Spring is coming. Hope is coming. I think I have fallen in love with the President of the Ukraine, whose name I could not have told you two weeks ago. After two years (make that five) of division and hatred and ugliness beyond description in this country and elsewhere, perhaps this universally scary situation will make us realize that we are all, in the final analysis, just people from different places, with different colors, and different religions, and different ideas, walking one another home.