" calculations of your impact "

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heartbreaking, unyielding, devastating love & devotion to the memory of those past.

i was listening to the radiolab podcast on the platform yesterday. i was listening, and i could hear he echoes of trains recent-past, ringing in the space between my earcups and the thin foam material of my children's, noise-limiting, plastic headphones. it was all that i could afford that day.

the sounds coming from the podcast were coming from the daughter of henrietta lacks, a woman whose cells are the most famous in the scientific community. her daughter, roberta, was in pain. her mother's cells were removed while getting treatment for cervical cancer, and those cells had some of the most unique properties that the world has ever seen or seen since. resilient, strong, audacious, and ever-evolving.

roberta was in pain, writhing and on the verge of a stroke. she was heavy with the burden of these cells. she was not a scientific woman, and couldn't quite understand what the scientists meant when they pointed and presented to her a culture tray and said, this is your mother.

roberta bent closer to the tray and whispered to the cells, so that her mother could hear her.

at the height of roberta's agony over the weight of the meaning of the cells, a family member began to sing gospel and praying for her. his booming voice overpowered my tiny insignificant headphone speakers, and i too for a moment, felt like her woes were mine, and he was now singing into my heart's pains.

i looked around at the people on the platform thinking,"how very lonely are we all?" i was looking into the person behind the faces. i was looking into the collective human experience. i was looking into outer space, galaxies, and distant cosmos bodies thinking, "how can we be so small, and the ache be so large? is there no respite?" it was a profound sadness that swept over me in that moment.

all of a sudden i missed my mom very much. then i missed everyone's mom that i ever knew and loved. then i missed everyone's mom on the planet, and felt myself floating further and further away from everything. past the platform, up through the earth to the street, past the buildings and trees, past the atmosphere, burning and exiting orbit, past the stars, past the immense darkness of space, and i was for a moment, the furthest away from my body i've ever been, and i was alone.

and then after the singing and preaching stopped, and i relaxed and calmed, all of that hurt dissipated, and came back into myself.

i was standing on the platform, alone amidst a quiet sea of strangers in the heat of an underground station. those reverberating train echoes rippling against my frame, and i found myself shaking while the tears just fell.

tonight's homework:

tell them you love them. tell them how much they mean to you. tell them now. tell them close and in person, if at all possible. hold them, comfort them, be honest with them, and find yourself vulnerable and filled with strength in the same moment. we have such a little pocket of time together, and it would be a pity to waste any of it.

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