I Wasn’t Over Boston

I wasn’t over Boston, and then the tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma. Actually that isn’t right. I wasn’t over Newtown when Boston happened, and then the tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma. There was the little glimmer of light that finding those three missing women in Cleveland brought. But, you have to admit, the Universe has been handing out a triple dose of disaster since December.
What would it be like to rush off to help shovel debris in Moore, to help find lost loved ones and pets, to put an arm around the injured and give them a hug? I thought about it tonight as I watched the extended news casts and listened to the stories. I’ve been witness to so much grief in the last few months that suddenly I wanted to stand up and shake my fist at the Universe and say, Enough, Already! Somehow, it seemed for a fleeting second as if I could put my finger in the dike of suffering and stop the tidal wave if I could just run across the country to help.
Silly thought. But watching people hurt, hurts.
Of course, like most of us, I can’t abandon my responsibilities. I can pull out the credit card and send a contribution, and since I’m not a trained disaster worker that act is probably a lot more valuable. And, true to my Southern religious upbringing now slightly skewed by my attraction to Eastern spiritual traditions, I can pray. Prayer is powerful and healing, whether you are doing the praying or are the one prayed for.
In these moments when I’m hurting for those who hurt, the opening words of a favorite movie always come back to me. The Hugh Grant character opens Love Actually by musing that the world isn’t really about hatred and evil but about love. He points out that the last messages from loved ones on 911 were all about love. Over and over today, when I’ve heard the Moore survivors in their interviews, they’ve all said the same thing: I have my loved ones, and that is all that matters. And that, to borrow a phrase from Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, is the First and Foremost Splendid Truth.