The goodbyes started sooner than we thought:
the artist boy who died in Vietnam’s jungle, the cheerleader who succumbed to breast cancer, the medical student who drowned off the coast of Greece.

Some of us left for college or the military, thinking we would return but did not.
We all thought we would keep in touch
while the silent crush of work and family swept time away.

Some got lost in heroin, alcohol and speed, sex and gambling.
Some of them recovered, while others disappeared into hospitals, jails and death-- the vibrancy of life eroded by endless cravings.

Some of us had good luck in acquiring love and fortune,
We have homes and money for retirement.
But many of us have no savings and our houses are losing value.

W.H. Auden, the poet, thought Americans were ashamed of their suffering.
But how do we keep our respect when lovers leave us, or we are broken by cancer or AIDS or chronic illness, when some of us are mentally ill and poor, or racked with pain?

We hide our loneliness like notes written on scraps of napkins.
We hide our love for one another.

We hide the failures that no one can see — loveless marriages, sleepless nights, boredom and emptiness, a wrong career or one that ended when someone else decided we were too old, we hid dreams that slipped away, and worst of all, lives lived by someone else’s rules.

We hide our fear, our grief,
and how much we need one another.

We have all walked in the valley of the shadow of Death, and we have all suffered the dark night of the soul.
There are no winner or losers here.
There is no contest.
We’ve all done about as well as we could.

We face different challenges.
But life demands answers to three questions.
Do our minds stay open to learning?
Do we forgive? Do we love?

There are no winner or losers here or anywhere.
Is anyone a loser who can make a child laugh?
Is anyone a winner who hates children or music or life?
Love is the point, not power.

Suffering, too, can bring gifts:
We now can again learn from a starry night, a forest in autumn, the ocean at dawn, summer’s sunflowers, and the touch of a baby’s hand.

By now we’ve learned three things:
that life is a gift,
gratitude is worship,
and love of one another, the deepest prayer.

Jason Wanger Reynolds

September 15, 2008

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