The Sad Lane

 

We’re in the sad lane. Watching as Mom powers down. Since we’ve arrived, we’ve watched her make heroic efforts to keep awake, to be sociable, while really just wanting to lie down again and sleep. Only a few days left here, and each day we make one or two visits to see her, but generally she is asleep, or wants to be asleep.

It’s hard letting go.

Walking along the sidewalk at Santa Monica beach the other day, we were shuffling slowly behind a group of people when suddenly a cyclist sought a way through the clump of people on the pavement. He wobbled; his bike hit the stone wall and skidded to its side, tipping him off and driving the bike into my knee and ribs. Just a graze, a bruise, nothing serious but shocking nonetheless.

Are you ok? I asked him, rubbing my ribs. He glared at me, mounted his bike and sped off, still on the sidewalk. There was a bike lane two feet away running parallel to us.

My bruises are healing, but I’ve been wondering about him. What drove him to make such an ill-considered decision to bike along a busy sidewalk when there was an empty lane available? What made him glare at me as if it were all my fault to be in his path at that moment? Is he nursing bruises today, or guilt, or pain that drove him that day, and struggles to find expression?

I’d say he’s in a sad lane as well. Maybe we all are, in one way or another. Trying to conceal and live with pains that drive us to make unwise choices, sometimes with consequences.

I am with you always, Jesus whispers. You are never alone, whatever lane you’re in.

Praise him.