The darkest hour is just before the dawn.

So they say.

On Friday morning, my cat wakes me just before dawn.

He insists upon this daily ritual. I escort him to his already full food bowl and back off a few inches – like a mother cat does when teaching her young kitten to eat prey. Only then will Koi eat.

Koi is a powerful five-year-old tomcat. He controls a territory several urban acres wide, coexisting with tough-minded raccoons, coyotes, and crows. But just before dawn, he is a little child who needs his mom.

It is about 6:30 am pacific time, 9:30 am eastern.

My mind cannot fall back to sleep. A simple practical problem becomes a tangle of negative thoughts. Life seems overwhelming; I am not up to the task. I think about dying and the peace it might bring. And I am consoled. My heart hurts, but just a little less.

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer visits my thoughts. “Suicide,” he says, “is one way to escape the pain of life. But there are better escapes that involve choosing life, growth, and inner change.” Lost in crushing insomnia, I choose life, and it is good.

But that slight good isn’t powerful enough to bring sleep. I walk to the bathroom for a drink of cool water, and look out the window.

It is 7:00 am.

Dawn is breaking. Or, more accurately, dawn rips through the sky, tearing a slice in the midnight blue clouds. One stripe of royal blue shines through the dark grey rainforest winter.

A hint of light, a spike in blood sugar, an active mind should uplift me into morning gratitude.

But what happens when it doesn’t? When morning itself isn’t reason enough to live? And I understand, like never before, a yearning to be free of my body. Its tyrannical jumble of broken circadian rhythms, and non-sequential metabolic sequences seem to interfere with healing of the spirit. Free of this body that refuses to sleep, my thoughts and feelings could sort themselves out.

Sunrise finally brings sleep. Backwards and crazy, but not unusual these days.

Like everyone else on this west coast, I wake to news of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Reported to 911 emergency response at exactly 9:30 am eastern time.

I should have known; often I can’t sleep when there’s a disturbance in the Force.

On line at the New York Times, Facebook, and my email inbox, I read a great outpouring of existential despair.

The despair is most eloquently expressed in a front-page article at America’s Greatest News Source, “The Onion.” The Onion specializes in political satire, but today it simply speaks the truth. Please read it. Now.

Of course, despite the article’s truth, there is a great deal to say about mental illness and lax gun control. About what happens when poor attention is paid to each – and then they intersect. And about grief, compassion, sorrow, and love. About the dozens of individual funerals coming up, each unique to a beloved bright light of a person and their family.

Today, the short winter day is wan but wonderful, with intermittent sunshine. As the sun sets, I am at a Jewish nursing home, singing Hanukkah songs. The guest musicians bring smiles and applause. Yes, I think, many of the residents are ill, and many are depressed. But all have lived long lives, an opportunity lost to twenty children at Sandy Hook School.

Chatting with the residents afterwards, I am reminded that many of them are first-generation Canadians. Many came from Europe, just before or after World War II, and are accurately called holocaust survivors. Many witnessed scenes like those the surviving children saw at Sandy Hook. They were traumatized. They were also resilient. They grew up, gradually restarted, and today their grown children sit beside them celebrating the holiday.

Death in its finality; near-death and resurrection; short life and long life; a will to live, even inside a fragile body – you can’t get more existential than that.

And, like America’s Greatest News Source, I don’t know what else to say.

— Image: bomayphoto.com