Don’t go overboard. Don’t forget to write. Don’t stress out. Don’t stay up too late. These commands have an authoritative ring, but on further examination, they’re also loving expressions of care and concern. A reference to “overboard” first brings to mind a boat or ship. I also link it strongly to my youth and early adult life as a warning to not max out Nana’s charge plate at Filene’s and also as a compliment on one’s successful hosting of a social event.  And these many years later, I still associate the “overboard” term with caution and congratulations.

It’s also framing a new definition for me, one that might go back to its original of “man overboard” and SOS requiring immediate attention. When that was yelled out shipboard, all came to the rescue, save for the pilot and first mate. A unified effort was made to save the soul who went overboard and to bring him back to safety.

Today, the whole world seems to be going overboard. The COVID-19 virus is upending communities, routines, food supply, family time, election campaigning, medical service, and so on.

Thankfully and gratefully, there are those on deck to help the ones who are drowning in these sea changes. However, travel plans, wedding plans, plans to give birth, plans to go (back) to school…are all held in limbo, because this insidious health crisis has no readily identifiable source and no concrete endpoint.

And so we distance and lose physical touch with most of the world. And we’re left to ponder, in our isolation, things that six months ago were unthinkable: closure of cities, borders, shops, churches… Now we’re all tenuously hanging on to one another by the thin string of the wireless network.

And thank God for it, because it’s a tremendously helpful way to keep in touch, to order necessities and non-essential feel-good items. The deliveries break up the day. And give a slight break to our collective isolation, as oxymoronic as that may sound.

My worry is for those who live alone and have no routine, little intellectual curiously, are bereft of pets, hobbies or spiritual life. For them, the days are long and empty and have no end in sight.

Maybe this is a reset button for civilization to live up to its name and become more civil with one another. We have to create new life lines for those among us who’ve lost their “sea-legs” and find themselves slipping to the edge of the deck, in danger of going overboard. In saving them, we also strengthen ourselves.

The Tribulations

“Look at all my trials and tribulations, sinking in a gentle pool of wine…Don’t disturb me now, I can see the answers, till this evening is this morning, life is fine”. So sang the inept Apostles in Rice and Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar”.  I got that album in the seventh grade. I listened to it non-stop. It became my habit to this day of listening to it straight-through on Good Friday afternoon. The lenten season builds up to the crescendo of Good Friday when all goes quiet because the Spirit of Wisdom and Love has been murdered on a cross by the Jews and Romans for being a political zealot. The Apostles ran and hid, realizing that the tribulations of the previous evening they put on hold with wine had now become clear. And the men were self-damning in their failure to stand up and support their Teacher as he faced arrest, judgment, ridicule and death. They couldn’t have known these events would occur to the level of intensity they did. So, what could their previous evening’s tribulations have been?

I submit they may have been similar to those shared at one time or another by all humans: fear, self-doubt, second-guessing, procrastination. Am I a good enough person that I’d stand between another and extreme adversity?  Theoretically, yes; realistically, I don’t know. I don’t really have the experience of being time-tested and truthed with a human.

With my beloved and deeply loved dog, Marco the 33 pound Standard Schnauzer, I did come between him and two free-running Rottweilers intent on killing him because they could. I grabbed a stick and ran between Marco and the two 150 pound Rotties. I saved my Marco’s life.

Mine was a consuming worry of losing Marco to death; a tribulation certainly. And when death expectedly wrested him from me, my world collapsed. But in the aftermath of our painful separation, I was a recipient of new gifts in faith, spirituality, empathy and leadership.

And strength, embodied in a vow to Marco before he left, that I would not seek out the comfort of alcohol to numb the chilling pain and gnawing loss of our separation. I wouldn’t have his passing also be the date of my slipping and having to give up every one of those hard earned AA chips.  I wouldn’t let this tribulation writ large “sink in a gentle pool of wine” (or vodka or rum).

Ten years later, it’s still a tribulation for me to have loved so deeply and lost so crucially. But I never have numbed it with alcohol. Instead, sobriety is a tribute to my boy.