I Am Sorry

I look on with unrelenting sadness as I view the harsh realities descending on and clinging to so many of those I hold close. My days, my mind, captured by worry.

I did not believe this would be the landscape around me in my early 70's. 2024 was brutal, the sting of those losses clinging to my every fiber. I had hoped, without reason, that a turn of the calendar would somehow bring the daylight back.

But I have most recently received hard truths about several more friends. Some worse than others, but none easy to absorb. One in particular shaking me to my core.

And then there are those who remain as ever in their long term battles, each day a continuing struggle not to fall victim to the emotional and physical hardships that are a constant, terrible presence.

I feel so helpless in all of this. My one sentence platitudes all I have to offer. Wishing it would all go away for each of those strangled by the complications of life. Each doing their best under conditions impossible to ignore.

And I know one day what they are compelled to confront will inevitably reach out and grab me as well. There is a vulnerability that has now seemingly attached to all my contemporaries, to all of my generation whose gaze meets mine. We are now unambiguously at risk.

I have no easy answers, no magic potion. I am but an observer of the dramas, the traumas. My heart truly aching for those in pain, for those fighting an unrelenting foe.

To say I am here ready and willing to provide help is not enough, not nearly so. And it is not true. For I am not able, not in the least. I am frustrated, angered and hurting for all who are suffering. Please forgive my failings. I only wish I could do, I could be, more.

Today I am sorry in so many ways.