Reaching Out

because we never know...

A good friend of 20 years ended her life this week.

We hadn’t spoken in many months but I was looking forward to seeing her soon on an trip she and her partner took every year from California to Canada, stopping by our home in the Oregon forest for a few days.

She’d talked about ending her life but swore she would never do it. Then she did. Unknown to me, she had recently lamented that she was a failure, that her life would never work, and that nothing she or anyone else might do to help could change that.

I don’t know what she or anyone else should do with their lives, so I respect her decision. Still…

I wonder … who is suffering in the shadow spaces of our lives, distant in time, lonely in their solitude, unsleeping with secrets they dare not share with anyone? Who is unable to wrestle their demons into submission on their own?

Who do we need to reach out to?

“Hey, I was thinking about you the last few days. How’s everything?”

We have phones and email and texts and meeting for coffee. We also have our minds and our hearts and the ability to choose what to do with our moments. I wonder, what would it be like to become a quantum lighthouse, circling light into the dark reaches of consciousness, touching whomever that light was destined to touch with the faintest feeling, maybe even during sleep, a blessing from an unknown source bringing a rejuvenation of hope and new strength to carry on as this something from nowhere holds them in an embrace, in comfort.

“On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place. Should the summer turn to winter, yours is no disgrace.” from The Yes Album.