Somber Calls

A lot of friends have been calling me lately. --Mostly to console me or themselves about the election. But with the somber meek miserable stomach influenza tone they talk in, you’d think my wife had died or something. Actually, it’s more like my wife has cancer. All my friends have heard about it by now. They wish they could do something about the cancer. But they just fumble with their words. They fumble with their frustration. But most of all the fumble with the feelings of betrayal because their prayers to God to cure the cancer go unanswered. Every time they call me, the cancer is still there. But that’s not what makes it so bad. It the fact that incidental people in there lives, people they’d prefer not to know right now, when the cancer is mentioned say things like, “What cancer? I saw his wife the other day. She’d lost weight. She never looked better.”

Meantime I’m making funeral arrangements.

I suppose those same incidental people will come to the funeral and say that reason my wife died was because she was a sinner. That’ll be consoling. I always have liked simple answers to complicated situations.