The Day After

We keep having these days, and then we have the day after.

On the day after, there is shock and pain and horror; there is fear; there is the latest bit of maddening news that does nothing to solve anything.

And today, where I live, there's a breeze rippling the catnip and lamb's ear, the one blooming, the other about to bloom.

How much grief can a single body hold? How much love and joy? If you look into the eyes of any old woman or old man on the sidewalk in your town, you'll see the history of pain in America, in the world. You'll see agonizing deaths and illness and Jim Crow and rape and lies and infidelities and car accidents and smashed dreams. Amid the ashes, the wars, the broken bones, you will see kaleidoscopic bits of yourself.

You'll also see starlight and cornfields and a newborn's first smile. First jobs and teary reunions and bonfires on the beach. Long embraces on back stairways. New York City glimpsed from an airplane. Graduation day. River water on cold toes. You'll see yourself, again.

Once, years ago, not long after my mother died, my friend Jay was consoling me on the elevator at work as we went to teach our classes. He told me what a nun said to him during his own time of loss: "Look for Jesus in the breeze, not in the gale.'" The elevator door opened, and I put that remark away to ponder for a lifetime.

We all have our own ways of dealing with private grief, politicized outrage, bottomless fear and sorrow. We think our thoughts, we do what we can.

In my corner of the world, on the day after, my eyes are tired. I have read enough. I glance again at the ripening flowers, the sky, the bumblebee. What would they say, what are they saying? I look and listen. The breeze travels on, from here to the moon and on to the ocean.