My Little Black Book

I have a little black book. It’s actually a calendar. I got it on clearance at Wal-Mart with a specific purpose in mind. It’s my important dates book. For my friends, and the people I love. Some of the dates are happy ones, but most aren’t. It’s the book I keep up with the hard dates. The deaths, and life changing events book. I didn’t choose the color because the contents are so hard. The reason it’s black is because that’s the only color they had with the big print for my old eyes.

I keep these dates so I can reach out to my people on the hard days, and the days surrounding them, to make sure they’re as okay as they can be… on those days when I know they’re not gonna be okay. My memory isn’t the best, so I have to have reminders. There are a lot of dates in my book. Life is hard. And I want them to know that they’re not alone in their pain.

If you have someone in your life that has hard days, I encourage you to take note, and check in on them. If you don’t know if they have hard days, ask. If you have hard days, tell your people. Tell them you need to be checked in on. We don’t have an instruction manual on how to handle all this stuff, but if we did, I’m sure this checking in on people on their hard days would be in it.

This is a lesson in love. Love bears witness to the suffering, and the awful things. Love reaches in. Love pours itself out like medicine on broken hearts. Love isn’t too proud to learn new ways to be expressed. Love is action. Love is beautiful, and so needed by every one of us.

May we all learn how to love each other better. And may we always shine light into the darkness of others’ pain and suffering, so they can see that there is hope.

Written with much love,

Braundi