What We Need

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On Saturday night, around nine, I called home. Emma had been sick during most of my trip. Before I left she had the itchy scratchies, but it seemed more than a skin irritation. It was. Liver failure. The beloved had to help her pass from this life. Optimistically, I thought making my call that there might have been if not a cure a quick fix. No. The beloved told me that Emma had passed. She could not talk; she was home. Crying upset Tibe and Vita. And she had no one to comfort her. In Washington, D.C., outside the conference hotel, I set my phone on marble and cried. A woman appeared before me. An angel. She hugged me. She comforted me. It was what I needed.

My mother used to always say, too little, too late. An explanation. A mantra. A way of knowing the world. Too little, too late. It sets one’s mind at ease in some ways for disappointment. It mitigates despair. It is a reminder of the folly of caring too much, of expecting happiness from the world. Too little, too late. It is a potion, an antidote. Too little, too late.

Though my experience in the world is so different than my mother’s. More than too little, too late, I find the world delivers what we need at the moment we need it. The woman, the angel who held me when I learned that Emma had died. The home where we could all live together after the bullies drove us from our home. The work that presents itself each morning, work that the world needs even if it unrecognized, unrealized. What we need appears when we open our eyes. My beloved Emma. My beautiful Saint Bernard. Her death. My sadness. The woman, the angel; her name is Camille.

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