I am feeling crummy tonight; I always get blue this time of year. This is not an essay of complaint but of humanity, at least I hope.

I spoke of my power; perhaps it sounded like bragging, but it is just a fact. It doesn’t do me any good. I have just been told I have it. Just like several people have seen a large angel with me or saw light when they looked at me.

I am an old now and yet I am the ageless wisdom itself, as are you. We have all failed God, ourselves and our friend and families again and again. And yet what courage we have when all is said and done.

We see commercials about the man that gives his wife a new car for Christmas, while we sit at home mourning those we loved. But life goes on.

I worry the most about Rob being alone when I am gone. He looks after me tenderly and yet we have our skirmishes about me playing the TV too loud and about him turning the heat down after I have turned it up. We are without two of the four of us.

I want to talk about the soul’s loneliness that even a family can fill. I know my loneliness like the back of my hand. I know that I don’t fit in anywhere, nor do I want to.

I can put on an act when I am having to be social, but I got over social a long time ago. I prefer the richness of solitude. So why am I feeling crumby tonight? Because I am a human being among billions, just like every one of us is.

I study truth because I was led to it by loss. The loss has made me a writer, as you all know.

So, in a nutshell, perhaps it is spiritual power I have, that we all have. I now wave a magic wand over this essay and it will turn into whatever you need right now. As the great Leonard Cohen sang, “Hallelujah.”

Vicki Woodyard