Hard Times

If you ever need to cheer me up, just put on the DVD or CD of The Band's The Last Waltz. It's on now, LOUD, at the end of a terrible week. The week actually started ten days ago when the husband of a dear friend of mine was suddenly hospitalized. Today was his funeral. Her heart is broken and her nine-year-old twins lost their father. There is and was so much love in that family, something I never stopped to think about before all this happened. It's not just our own lives that we often take for granted. I can only imagine the sadness. There is no platitude anyone can say to make things better. There is nothing good about this. It's the kind of grief you don't get over. You figure out how to live with it in a kind of stutter-stop-start again. No one can help her with that, but she's got a lot of us who'll pitch in on all the practical things. We'll aim for the grace in casseroles and clean laundry, parts of the daily management of sorrow.