After the hospice benefit

A return to blogging, borne of the need to divest myself of thought.

See, I am tired of thinking. Absolutely, positively burned out.

I watched the final presidential debate tonight after attending a benefit for Francis House, a hospice staffed by angels who kindly and gently help the terminally ill with their journeys into peace. Well-fed, well-entertained and well-wined, I find that I am exhausted. Completely sick of thinking about democrat vs republican, bailout bills, out-of-control spending, abortion rights, an unpopular war and an economy that threatens to drift back into the 1930s. I am so tired of trying to figure out college financing, home budgets, career decisions. Should I vote this way or that? What do I do with seething anger over the economic crisis? How can I convey to my kids the enormity of the debt they are undertaking in getting through college? How do I rail against a system that has crushed the middle class, without taking responsibility and initiative?

But, the benefit reminds me that we all will die someday, no matter how much we own, what party we lean toward, which career path we take. In the face of death, all else becomes irrelevant. Small. Well, almost everything.

As I just now settled in to ponder all this on a warm couch manned -- er, beagled -- by an even warmer dog, I was grateful to retreat from it all with my animals. I can come home from the world and pet the birds, and they don't care what my politics are as long as I'm here and I hit the right spot just above the beak. My dogs will curl up in the bend of my knee backs, contentedly oblivious to my status and my ability to buy a better blanket with which to cover us. My Lab was happy today simply to splash in the cool water of an autumn lake, cheerily retrieving sticks regardless of apparent agenda; she cares only that she is not separated from those she loves. My animals eat when they're hungry, bark when they feel protective, go outside with their excretions and always, always show love when they feel it.

I want to live so simply. But my humanness won't let me. That is why I share my life with animals and why -- as I did tonight -- I drink wine with people I love whenever possible, especially when it can benefit others, too.