of lingering emotion and shared burdens

Have you ever been somewhere that you can feel the weight of sadness around you?

I believe that there are such places, where emotion lingers in the air like a thick morning fog or a late afternoon haze.

I sit here in a Starbucks in the South Texas Medical Center, surrounded by doctors and nurses and patients of all kinds. They are in hospitals and offices, in waiting rooms and operating theaters. I imagine (remember?) the depth of concern that surrounds them all. I imagine their loved ones, laying attached to beeping, whirling machines. I imagine that many around me are reassessing, reconsidering, and generally regretting as they wait and hope that their mother or sister or brother or son might make it through the night. They wait and hope that they may see the other side of surgery, of terror, of disease.

This haze is thick and the burden is mine now as well. Maybe I share it because I can imagine (remember?) their grief. Maybe I share it because suffering is unlike any other human frailty. Maybe I share it because I believe that there are such places, where emotion does indeed linger...