Whether Surrounded or Alone

 Whether Surrounded or Alone

(“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Romans 8:32)

It was not an accident,
it could have been foreseen,
when the floor rose up to punch me
in my face. Severe anemia stole my balance,
I went down without thinking. I went down without
feeling a thing until
the floor and my nose met near midnight and
as far as anyone could tell
I had been in a barroom brawl fighting over
the levels of whiskey in an old-fashioned.
It was not my first fall, not by far, but one of the few
that could not be chalked up to
a moral failure or indiscretion. My blood was simply
lacking oxygen. And my body stopped mid-step toward
the bathroom
and awoke with laminate and dust on my face.

And what shall we say about these things, how shall we
describe these incidents of black-eyed madness? How shall
we understand self-care in a community that has forgotten
village meals and the healing of homemade soup to lonely
stumblers who spend their days alone?

Some have family. And I am more than blessed, my soul
lights up like Christmas to even have them near. And
yet,
failure should not exempt us from
visiting participants from the hamlet who have also
secretly crashed smack-dab in the spotlights left on overnight.

Perhaps as the sun takes years for its final setting
we know we would be weary whether surrounded or alone.
But we do not desire the tears to end,
but to be seen, collected, and shared; a toast
to humanity’s spectrum, the gift that includes pain and
joy, sometimes equally in the same moment of time.