The Walking Wounded

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.
-Emily Dickinson

We are the walking wounded. In truth, I can speak only for myself, and frankly, I can’t remember a day in a long, long while that I haven’t felt the weeping of my wounds. Yet I am reminded time and again that the balm that heals comes through our relationships with one another. We are nurtured and diminished by these connections.

As I watched “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” yesterday, I was struck especially by one scene where the main character details the circumstances that led to his beloved being struck by an automobile. If, if, if, we insist. How many lives were changed forever in all of the ifs that came into play on the tragic day of September 11, 2001. If I could do it over again, we say. If only I had known. If only I had cared a little more.

This morning, as I revisited the events of last night, a neighbor in drunken despair who for some reason chose me as the object of his cry for help, a cry that neither he nor I recognized in the heat of our exchange, I realized that I felt violated. A profound sadness planted itself squarely on my soul. As he insisted last night that he would be heard, I resisted equally the strength of his frustration and anger. As we struggled aloud with one another, I lost sight of the man who had called me an angel, not so long ago. With the coming of light today, a palpable darkness stole my strength. I wanted only to sit, quietly, and to mourn, but I knew that something was expected of me. “You have to move through this. Don’t let him rob you…” a friend advised. “God bless you…” his mother pleaded when she called late in the morning to apologize for her son’s behavior. It wasn’t the first apology, and I suppose it won’t be the last. I know that I have to reach out, in
strength, to this man. I know that I must forgive.

The Walking Wounded—Santa Fe New Mexico (May 5, 2009)
R. Harold Hollis