There but for fortune
"Come back! No! Come back! It's not time! It's not time!"
So went the anguished cries of a homeless woman, whom I had rushed by not half an hour before. I had seen her sitting on a park bench with her companion and was struck by how life had carved itself so forcefully on both of their faces.
Only now she was on the other side of the street, screaming as she followed behind that same companion--wrapped in a sheet, motionless, and slumped on a stretcher--as the EMTs brought him down the steps of the library and into an ambulance.
"Come back! It's not time!"
I felt that scream. Felt it. How can you hear something like that and not be moved? Not want to take that kind of pain away somehow?
We forget we're all human. We forget how quickly life can turn. We forget that when one of us feels pain, we all do.
But life reminds you.
