night of grace

J-Dog is quiet tonight. He has held onto M a bit longer than usual, and has folded himself into my arms in a way he rarely does. He witnessed an absence of hope today, and he is weary.

A client at his work slowly tried to kill himself last night. He took a disposable razor to his neck and chipped slowly away at skin and vein until his bed and walls and floor resembled a crime scene. He spent all night slowly and quietly bleeding to almost death, and if not for the woman who entered his room early this morning, he'd surely be gone. The woman asked him if she could borrow some money, and the man, this dear man, handed his wallet over in the dark and said that she could have whatever was in his wallet. It was dripping with blood.

J works at a voluntary psycho-social rehab for folks who struggle with chronic mental illness. It's not a locked facility, but in this level of care he sees a lot of human suffering. We both do, and when it's on a daily basis, somehow poverty, illness and pain takes on a bit of normalcy - it's like an old friend, or a comfortable shirt - and we don't always take note of it as we should. But once in a while someone's suffering is so profound, so absent of hope, that it startles us back into remembering what we see every day, and of the simple grace we've been afforded.

J-Dog is quiet tonight. And there aren't many words anyways, once the plot has been hatched and the story comes to an end. But the loneliness of this precious man has touched us both. Knowing that someone laid awake last night slowly willing himself to die, quietly and hopelessly alone, has also quieted us. What is profound is the silence. And the other silence that lurks inside all of us, that some of us wrestle with more deeply, at 2am, and at 4am, the clock ticking slowly, there but for the grace of god go we.

i haven't forgotten about pt. 3. it's still in the wok and will be served up shortly.