When Life Feels Hungover

The Morning After

On the morning after Independence Day, a treasured relative who hasn’t spoken to me much lately sends a lonely message: She hates the fourth of July. My adoptive dad was born that day. He would have turned ninety-seven yesterday. He was a firecracker of a man.

Just like all the others who share this birthday, Dad always thought the holiday was just for him. As strange and often dysfunctional as our family has been, he brought a lot of light into our world. Most importantly, he loved my mother so deeply that when I think of it I forgive all her brokenness. And now this treasured family member sounds so lost, so lonely, so broken.

Just like you. Just like me.

¹

Too many sad words have been written about lonely aloneness. The wind howling, the island no man is supposed to be, a train whistle in the night. The delphinium you tried so hard to nurture died anyway. The love you wanted to spread withered on the vine. The ocean or the OD that ripped away your precious loved one, left only sea foam to remember your aloneness.

You definitely can’t take it with you. In fact, you’re set to arrive in the hereafter—whatever it is—naked, stripped of everything you collected, every trinket you fought to possess. But heavenly aloneness?

I don’t know how or why, but I believe we’ll never walk alone again.

I doubt if it’ll be pearly gates and angels strumming harps. But there will be an undeniable sense of community, of oneness, of not aloneness. Maybe we won’t sing kum-bay-ya, but we will not be alone anymore.

And I wonder, in this morning after of regret, of despair, of grief so hard it sucks away your breath, if God somehow is always urging us toward un-aloneness here on earth.

Trouble is, we like to silo ourselves into us and them, me and you, rich and poor, cool and not cool, saved or not. God must go nuts wondering if we’ll ever get it right this side of paradise.

My treasured family member sounded so alone. A reader asked me how to love when you’re alone. Even studies show we’re all bummed and depressed over our aloneness. I certainly have been down since the political landscape has become so cruel and skewed toward the rich. Lots of really smart people have given answers to our separate-ness.

I keep coming back to love.

. . . if I see oneness everywhere in creation, then, bam! God is there in our midst, belting out love songs.

When I open myself to love—and by that, I mean the Great Command of loving God and neighbor—suddenly, oneness barges in the doors I so carefully barricaded. The more I love in action, the more I’m thrust into community. The more I see others’ suffering. The more I reach out my hand instead of my fist.

I admit that the current political scene has my fists clenched and ready to rumble. I hate hate hate the direction we’re headed in as a country. Just like my relative hates the Independence Day holiday, I abhor detainees in cages while elected officials laugh. I hate that Medicaid recipients and those needing food assistance won’t get the help they need. I can barely contain my fury over the cuts and shakeups and broken promises.

My adoptive dad probably would have cheered—he was a Barry Goldwater guy. And yes I hate that fact too.

But here’s the thing. Loving God and my neighbor isn’t about division. In fact, the more you open the spigot of love, the more you find you have in common even with the ones who celebrate what you hate.

There’s a saying in the recovery community that recovery from addiction is about addition not subtraction. The more we search for our oneness, the less we have to argue about. The more mercy we show to our enemies, the more mercy we bestow upon ourselves.

I’ll still fight hard to get these atrocious new laws and behaviors reversed. But if I see humanity everywhere I look; if I see oneness everywhere in creation, then, bam! God’s there in our midst, belting out love songs. We can sing along.

I know it sounds rather Pollyanna to talk about love in the face of all these tragedies. And when you live alone, eat alone, sleep alone, the world feels cruel and unforgiving. But as the song reminds us, “Let there be peace on earth, and “let it begin with me.”²

My relative agonizes over memories that make July fourth a miserable day. My dad, nearly all our other loved ones have gone to their eternal rest. Losing my mom and now my husband shows me that when your loved ones die, you still wake up the next morning, hungover with grief and sorrow, wishing you weren’t so alone.

The cure for isolation of aloneness is always going to be to love more.

When you’re sure that you’re so unlovely that alone is stamped on your forehead, love can feel like a really awful joke. But wait. Benny, the boy I met long ago in the crippled children’s hospital, was horribly burned in a fire. Poor kid had no eyelids and no ears, no nose, no lips. Yet he saw beauty everywhere and even professed love for a fellow crip like me.

He taught me that you can have the worst stuff befall you, be rejected by everybody, have little girls run away screaming when they meet you, and still learn to love. His secret power was that as long as you love, you’re never really alone. I’ll never hate that.

1. I took this photo when I was about 8 years old with my Brownie camera.

2. “Let There Be Peace on Earth” by Jill Miller and Sy Miller, 1955.