Waking one morning last week to some very bad news from a close friend, I find my capacity for tragic events has narrowed. If I now wake every day thinking of this news, I can imagine the impact it has had on my friend. I have known for some time that this was a possibility, however, being a person with my own problems, I chose to ignore the signs of distress. Slowly drawing into myself over the last couple of years, I now find myself in no position to offer comfort or much else now to someone who has been one of my best friends. I don't say that lightly, because I have had many, many friends over the decades but like most people, the ones that truly came close and made a difference are few and far between. Almost none of them are from the latter decades but from the way back.
Addressing the sorrow. The sorrow wells up inside for someone who is now probably living in a fog of pain. There is a list that I saw years ago, it has the events in ones life that affect a person the worst. It isn't a short list but some things on it are Being Laid Off, Bankruptcy, Losing a Child.and other things like that. When one of these things happens to a person, most estimates give a two year window of recovery from it. Most items dip you deep into dispair,let you wallow in that for awhile and then, slowly, ever so slowly,you begin to inch back to feeling okay again. One day you wake up and you actually feel happy again. Time marches on, so they say. What happens to a person who has two things from the list happen in a short period of time, what about three things? Is the mourning period longer or is it just that much more intense? Hard to say. I have had some of the list occur, some deeply affected me, some not so much but never did I have more than one to deal with at once.
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