What Do You Do When You're Blue

I, apparently, make appointments, everything I have put off in the past year or so. I visit the orthopedist and the ophthalmologist and the dentist and the ob-gyn. I get my hair cut and my annual mammogram and the 30,000-mile checkup on my car. I return all the things I've been meaning to return and check out the library books I've been intending to read.

I sort files and clean house and make myself start exercising and eating more carefully, because I know all these things will ultimately make me start feeling a little better. (And if not, at least I will have a new haircut and new glasses, a car that works well, a clean house, a stack of books to read, and the knowledge that all my check-ups are behind me for another year.)

Then I read about the heartache a young friend is facing with her mother's rapidly spreading cancer and I realize, however much I may be hurting, it is nothing compared to the hurt she is enduring, at a far younger age than when I lost my father. And I know there is nothing I can do for her, other than tell her that she is stronger than she knows and that I'm proud of her for bearing up under all this (she is, after all, only just turned 18), and let her know that I do understand, at least a little. And the thing I am so blue about seems, in comparison, not quite as insurmountable.