People appreciated my rare post yesterday about taking a knee. "Thank you for writing this," was the median comment. "I've been feeling the same way."
And just like you, this week I went back to work.
Already this week with the help of my colleagues I:
Created a webinar to help my customers deal with the coronavirus.
Got up at 6:00 and read Scout 30 pages of The Great Gatsby, because God knows I can't help her with chem.
Went for a four-mile run while playing the Star Wars theme on my headphones, which was a very good move. Try it sometime.
While I was on the run, received a text from my colleague Benjamine, who lives in Arizona. Green shoots! (Great colleague!)
A cousin sent me a poem called "Good Bones," because he said my post reminded him of it.
A speechwriter pal wrote to ask if I was OK.
I'm OK.
The funeral is Friday, in Cleveland.
I'll be on my way tomorrow—to be with people who I love, who are terribly sad. Wise people, who know well what Maggie Smith knew, when she wrote in "Good Bones," that "The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children."
Several years ago I helped an army officer who was dying of cancer write a book, for his three children.
"When someone on the team got tired, we stopped and we took a knee to rest," said the late Lieutenant Colonel Mark Weber in Tell My Sons. "When someone on the team got tired, we stopped and we took a knee to rest. But we always got back up, and we never quit . . . never. Just like those young soldiers, we can all take a knee too, but if we don’t get back up and move out, we’re likely going to die or fall to pieces in that place."
We'll take a knee.
And we'll get back up.
And we'll move out.
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