Juxtapose

I'm slowly learning that it's really okay to cry for people who I barely know. I think I know all this stuff about them (every surgery, every bodily function), but I really don't, And it's okay, even then, to cry when I hear they're hopeless, they're dying, and sometimes they don't even know. It's hard to know someone's going to die before they do. Somehow it seems very invasive, intrusive. Like you have this big secret surprise that isn't appropriate for giving as a birthday gift. Just this big ugly thing you have to hide until they get the final reports and the doctors give them the news.

So. Lots of tears today. At 8:30PM, home welcomed me back, and waiting for me was Mark and a sandwich he had salvaged from a work-catered lunch. It was this long baguette of crusty Italian sourdough bread with olive oil, fresh, clean slices of homemade mozzarella, whole basil leaves, oregano, and thinly-sliced tomatoes. I don't really like basil, mozza, or tomatoes on their own, really. I could probably drink a cup of olive oil no sweat, but the rest of that stuff I could usually take or leave. Tonight it just tasted so good, though. It tasted so light and fresh that all of a sudden I found myself with tears dribbling down my face for the third time of the day, listening to happy songs, feeling joy and this weird detached (but personal) grief for people I don't know anything about besides the fact that they're going to meet their Maker very soon. And I can't say that they know Him very well at all. They think these trials of life are so difficult. They either are so full of bitterness at the hand they've been dealt, or they just are so oblivious, and yet, at the end of it all, if He says, "I never knew you"... I guess that's hard to take in for me.