Are We Alone?

You know, I've been hearing for years that isolation is a fundamental quality of the human condition - the whole, "You're born alone, you live alone, and you die alone" thing, and I've nodded my head sagely for years to that triplet.

The thing is, I am realizing that I'm not sure what that means.

"Born alone?"

You come into this world out of your mother's own body, with an umbilical cord attached; within seconds you are in her tender arms being held and cared for with the most primal love there is.

"Live alone?"

Not if you have even the barest shred of empathy, the most minimal social skills; ever notice that when something awful happens (9/11?), we instinctively drop all the crap we use to isolate ourselves from others (money, pride, class, etc), and we remember, if only for a few precious hours or days, that the only thing we have that matters is each other, and we are thus priceless? We are alone only to the extent that we willfully forget our fundamental interconnectedness.

When I was in the Army, there was a kid in my unit named Rivera. Rivera was from Puerto Rico, and was pretty much liked by everyone - he had a quick smile, and would take some of the newer guys under his wing and show them what was expected of them. He had a very pretty wife, and a new son named for him.

When we were out in the field one time, Rivera violated policy and picked up a dud round, a grenade, and it went off in his hands. It took him about 5 minutes to bleed out while the medevac was called in. He died in the arms of a buddy of his who was a surfer from L.A. named Griffin.

After we got back from the field, we had a formation at the end of the month (on payday) where the First Sergeant would call the last names of everyone in the unit, in alphabetical order, and as our names were called each soldier would answer with his first name and middle initial and then fall out. He went through the names, and then called "Rivera!"

There was a terrible, echoing silence; he called again, "Rivera!, and everyone there felt the silence resonate again; he called a final time, his voice breaking, "Rivera!" and by then everyone in that formation had tears in his eyes. His wife held her baby boy, and we could hear her crying softly.

In that moment, we ceased to be black or white, Privates or Sergeants or Majors or rich or poor or urbane or bumpkin; all of that faded into insignificance. We were brothers, just brothers, bound together in our grief. We missed our friend.

"Die alone?"

My father died (of cancer) in my arms, surrounded by his family, and as he left this world I said a silent prayer of thanks that I had him for 34 years, and for him to have a safe journey. All of us told him that we loved him.

Like I said, I've nodded my head sagely for years to that triplet: "You're born alone, you live alone and you die alone."

I'm not sure what that means any more. I'm not sure I've ever known.

A Woman Called Hope

I side, reflexively and all the time, with the little guy. Unions. Blue Collar people generally. The Poor. Minorities. The desperate. The doomed. The outcast. That little old lady you see pushing a shopping cart full of garbage outside Starbucks? She's your sister. What can you do to help her? The fact that she's talking to people who aren't there means she needs help. How can we make America a place where she is overwhelmed with gratitude at the help that follows her around, ready to catch her if she stumbles?

The soldier returning from war, unable to escape the terrible knowledge that what he has seen has shown him the damnable lies that our country tells itself in order to enable men to do things that will haunt them forever? The one who wakes up downstairs, halfway out the front door, because he heard an explosion in his dream and is now warning buddies who aren't there that they are about to die and his wife doesn't understand but tries to be there for him any way she can, but at the same time she's worried for the children? What can you do to help them? They are your brother and sister. How can we make America a place where they are overwhelmed with gratitude at the help that follows them around, ready to catch them if they stumble?

The man, now 45, who suffers from nightmares and flashbacks from growing up in a neighborhood where he went to sleep many nights to the sound of gunfire; where he lost precious, priceless, irreplaceable friends to random murders, and is not sure he can handle one more fucking senseless death? How can we make America a place where he is overwhelmed with gratitude at the help that follows him around, ready to catch him if he stumbles?

The woman whose actual first name is Hope. The one who wakes up every morning and, if she's lucky, has a few moments of peace before she remembers that both of her precious grandchildren were murdered; before she remembers that losing the first one was hard, but staring into another grandson's coffin almost exactly a year later -- that that was the beginning of the desolation and crushing grief that robs her daily of the rightful, well-earned joy of being a grandparent. She spends her free time ministering to the kids in the neighborhood, doing what she can to reach them before the gangs or police do. The ones she loses to murder she prays for; the ones in prison she visits and writes to. She is a saint. She needs your help.

How can we make America a place where she is overwhelmed with gratitude at the help that follows her around, ready to catch her if she stumbles?

America has become a scary place in the last 30 years. How can we make America a place filled with people who are overwhelmed with gratitude at the help that follows them around, ready to catch us if we stumble?