I went to the movies yesterday, on the last official day of my non vacation. I call it a non-vacation because I thought before I had this surgery that I would be strong enough to get my proverbial house in order. You know extra energy to clean out all of the closets and clean out my garage which has somehow become the holding cell of 15 years worth of life. That’s a lot of stuff especially when you consider that in the garage there are belongings of my dead paternal family (grandfather, father and grandmother all dead in a 9 month period of time – now that was a tough year) and a maternal grandmother who left this plane a while ago and a maternal grandfather who at age 90 packed his house up and gave it all away in order to live in a retirement community. Now, he basically vacillates between waiting to die and wanting not to. He hasn’t decided which realm he wants to live in. I say all that to say it’s a lot of stuff. An attic full and built in cabinets full not to mention the boxes. I’ve been divorced a long time and the tool area of my garage is well, limited at best. I think you get the picture – a lot of stuff!

Anyway, I went to the movies with a woman who inspires me. She has single handled saved more refugees than anyone know. When I say refugees – think about Darfur, Somali, Sudan, Rwanda, Burma and countless other countries where people are murdered and tortured and raped in the most horrific of ways and most of us aren’t brave enough to even look let alone help. And there isn’t judgment in that statement – it just is the way we are. I know those stories – I’ve listened to them but, for a fraction of the time she has. We saw The Kids Are All Right, which I enjoyed. It was a nice break from the routine my life has become since surgery. My back is acting up since the surgery and despite an emergency epidural steroid injection there hasn’t been much relief. Sitting is hell but, I did it because I like her and because she sent me an email a few weeks before my surgery that screamed sorrow. I don’t think anyone should sit in that place too long or alone. Call me Pollyanna but I do still believe in the power of love.

After the film, she sat with me on a leather chair in the middle of the mall and she cried for two hours. Big tears that left trails in even the most perfect of skin. My heart broke with her. I listened because I have learned that listening is a gift we so rarely offer one another and since leaving her I can’t stop thinking about sorrow.

I’ve spent a lifetime in one form of suffering or another – maybe we all have. I think I have a good handle on suffering and I really do believe that in every one of our tears there is a gift. A lesson offered, a way to embrace wisdom or a path to our own soul’s evolution. When we get better so does the world. I need it to have meaning and to matter.

I go back to work Monday and I jump straight into trial. I told Udai, that it’s good I have a month before September. I’m scared of September. I’m scared of the case that I know if the jury finds the defendant not guilty I will break. I know I’ve over stepped my boundaries but, some things in life are so horrific that they hardly seem human or better said the perpetrators hardly seem human. Some crimes are so monstrous they can’t even be spoken out loud because the ears and the hearts of the person listening would die. I carry those stories and sometimes, people’s sorrow haunts me. She is a victim I will carry to the fire.

Today, my house is quiet. My son out at a birthday party with his girlfriend. Udai at work – scrambling to make it through audits. I am pissed that my back hurts and then I step back and I think, how dare you feel self-sympathy when there is so much suffering the world and in that suffering the most intense beauty. The rawness of humanity humbles me and leaves my head bowed in deep gratitude to life and to all that is Divine.