Journey

Shakespeare said:
 "All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts"

Our lives are not just "sound and fury signifying nothing" as the Bard said. For those of us left behind on the stage-- the show must go on. And we have to learn our new parts as other "characters" come and go.The play can change from comedy to tragedy at a moments notice. Love, loss, pain and hope are all part of the play and who we become as a result signifies everything.

This Saturday was so unbelievably shocking and upsetting that I can't even write about it yet. But my writing group friends mentioned it   HERE, HERE and HERE. We have all been floored.

Sometimes things happen that are hard to even wrap your head around. When people you love suffer it is the darkest, most helpless feeling in the world. You don't want to move on like nothing happened--you don't want to leave someone to grieve alone. But that's the tragdy of it all. Everyone grieves alone. Surrounded by love, by support... we are alone inside the pain.

"He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. And then - the watcher at his pulse took a fright. No one believed. They listened to his heart. Little - less - nothing! - and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs."
--Robert Frost

It is the lot of the living to walk the treadmill until our turn is over.We have no choice but to move on because we travel with time as long as we live. And the world keeps turning even when it feel like our hearts have stopped beating. We feel guilty when it seems we must leave our dead behind. But I believe Wordsworth had it right when he said:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
... And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home."

So death is a waking and remembering. And those who die actually leave the living behind for just a little while. Whether ahead or behind we are all traveling to the same place. Our paths will cross again.

Shout out to my grieving friends. I love you. My heart can't help but break along with yours. I'll make this journey with you in any way you need me to. Lean on me. Together we will find the "new normal".

God bless you.