Message received, message sent: Life is fragile

Many of us discover that the biggest surprise of our awakening as adults is the fragility of our fellow humans. Strong people we idolized, at least to some degree, became ill, had mental breakdowns, made stupid mistakes and, the ultimate, died.

A friend reminded me of that this week. He came into a room where I was sitting, a friendly hand outstretched, as usual, but it was easy to tell something was up. The look on his face was pained and his manner, unlike our usual encounters was abrupt.

“Life is fragile,” he said. “Tell them life is fragile.”

He meant that I should write a column on the fragility of the human mind, body and soul.

To explain, my friend launched right into a story.

He had come from his office where he had been on the phone with the wife, now widow, of a longtime business friend.

“I knew him well,” he said. I saw him every single month for 10 years. I knew everything about him.”

One thing he knew was that his friend and his friend’s wife were getting on in years, approaching a period where they could use more help and physical support from another human. They wanted that person to be their daughter, who lived 900 miles away.

“For years now I have been telling him, as an adviser and a friend, to sell his house and move back nearer his daughter,” my friend said. It was an area the couple called home.

“You never know what could happen,” he told his friend. “One of the three of us, myself, your wife or you will go first. You never know which of us it will be. It could be me, or you. You need to be ready for that.”

So the friend and his wife made the trip to Rhode Island to visit with the daughter, have a bit of a vacation and nose around for a house to buy.

Two weeks ago his friend called. “We did it,” he said. “We bought a house. We are going to move back home. Everyone is delighted.”

“I just hung up the phone from his wife.” my friend said. “She called to tell that he had died within the last hour. He got up from the lunch table, said he had a chest pain and fell dead.

My friend begged his leave.

“I have to call her back,” he said. “I have to talk with her.” He was going to remind her that she would not be alone; that her husband had taken care of her so that she and the daughter could be together.

Before leaving my friend grew reflective.

“Do you think the people in Washington know that life is fragile?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Trump certainly doesn’t. He doesn’t care about individual lives.”

“He doesn’t come from Washington,” my friend, a longtime amateur politician, said. “He is from another world.”

Which is the bottom line reason Trump has to go, ASAP.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2pCfssU