If people have hope, it's usually because they can see tomorrow. In their own hopes and dreams, in their children's eyes or hear laughter in grandkids. Or have a mother or father and no massive disease process and unmanageable pain syndromes. Be grateful if you have that. I was.

But when it goes so fast, your beloved people taken unfairly, brutally when you are just coming of age where work, colleagues, respect, self-respect and identity mature and then gets blown to bits by war, abuse, neglect, fascism, the US Healthcare system ad nauseum?

The skin thickens, the sorrow overwhelms, the weakness undermines, the loss devastates, the fire burns whatever is left of empathy and love and the realization that maybe you gave others too much because you wanted to belong to something, be loved by someone, be cared about?