Rain before Dawn

There should be a name for it. It came in a sudden burst, woke me up and enveloped the world outside my window, one of the many sounds I love, rain at night.

Out in the dark things are not easy. A friend's partner is dying of what is almost certainly Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Said friend is a person of faith who is getting support from family, friends, and community, but pain is coming. There is no way really to honour what is happening here, only to bear witness in the presence of all this love.

The rain has stopped and the sky lightens. It's 4.42 as I write this, the sun rose at 4.37 apparently. This grey will at once brighten and deepen into proper blue, a line of light with a barely discernible pink edge can be seen on the Eastern horizon. Night left quickly. The rain has stopped for now but the wind blows straight out of the west, clouds running before it. Makes no difference, perhaps, beyond my own eyes and some poetic feeling. But it's daylight.

Facebook Haunting

Two/three days after recollecting a guy with whom I had, well, less a moment more a nuclear incident over 30 years ago, his wife's name appears on my FB in the People You May Know section. I saw it, thought what the hell, is this who I think it is? and followed it. And there she is. And there he is. I looked and learned two things: 1) She is as pretty at 60 as she was at 20. 2) Forget the power of age to weaken or dismay. In the end, it's bloody embarrassment that does us in.