In the Darkness

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.”  - Og Mandino

It is the time in the darkness, praying for sleep that I'm finding so hard.  It has been a long time since I've spent the bewitching hours trying to bargain with God.  In the daylight hours, I am confident and rational, the constant mantra playing in my head - this too shall pass, I am safe, my husband is safe, my son is safe, my sisters are safe, my friends are safe.  And I bake and paint and clean and cook and write and bead and work.  But when the sun sets, it's not so easy.  

I am not afraid for myself.  I've lived almost sixty-five years on borrowed time and had more lives than a cat.  I am going nowhere and taking no risks.  My husband does the grocery shopping for which I am grateful, but he is not all that young anymore either and I worry a little about his exposure.  My son is safe in his downtown condo but he lives alone and I worry about his mental well being after so much isolation.  He only goes out to buy groceries when it is absolutely necessary, but he must get in an elevator to do that, a new source of concern.  One of my sisters has been trying to shake a bug she got weeks before covid19 came to Canada.  She is on the mend, but I have been worrying about her and her vulnerability.  My other sister is in her seventies, single and without someone to do her errands for her.  I know she isn't going far either but I worry she isn't as cautious as she should be when she does have to go out.  There is something about the darkness that makes small worries seem so big.  

I have noticed that my emotions start to rise in the early evening hours, usually when the six o'clock news is on.  It's not the stories quoting the dire statistics that make me come unglued.  It is the sweet stories of loving gestures by ordinary people trying to make things a little better for strangers that make me weepy.    It is the stories of the health care workers and grocery store clerks and volunteers at the food bank.  It is the chalk messages scrawled on fences and sidewalks and driveways, thanking front-line workers for their courage.  And it is the stories of families who cannot be with their dying seniors because the nursing homes are closed to visitors.  For the first time since she passed, I realized that I am grateful my mom is no longer alive.  She would have been confused, alone and afraid and there would have been nothing any of us could do about it.

None of us knows how much longer this scourge will go on.  I know I am not trapped or stuck in my house.  I am safe at home and in the midnight hours, I pray that all those I love are safe too.