December 24: An Awful Hole

"Each man's life touches so many other lives.  And when he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"

George gets pissed at Clarence

Clarence says this to George near the end of It's A Wonderful Life.  George has just visited his mother who, without having George as a son, has turned into an angry, bitter, old woman.  Mrs. Bailey runs a boarding house, and she tells George that Uncle Billy has been committed to an insane asylum since he lost the Building and Loan.  George's brother, Harry, died at age eleven when he fell though the ice on a lake and drowned.  George wasn't there to save Harry.  Without George, everyone's lives have become empty and dark.  George's wish of never being born has brought disaster to each person he loves.

No person really knows about how big a difference his or her life has made.  I often wonder if what I do every day has any impact.  Getting up at 4 a.m., registering patients, teaching writing and literature, singing in the church choir, playing the pipe organ--I'm not sure any of this really affects anything.  Living my life is like writing my blog.  I send these posts out into the ether, not knowing if anybody's reading them, if my words are making any kind of impact at all.  That's a pretty good metaphor for life, I think.

George really is given a great gift.  He gets to see what life would be like without him, and he learns what an awful hole his absence would leave behind.  I just found out a husband and wife from church lost their twenty-something son to a drug overdose yesterday.  An awful hole.  My wife lost her mother to ovarian cancer when my wife was 19.  An awful hole.  My aunt just lost her husband of over 50 years this fall.  An awful hole.  George gets a second chance.  Not many people get second chances.

I've actually gotten a few second chances in my life, and I'm grateful for each and every one of them.  I have a son because of a second chance.  I have a wife because of a second chance.  I've lived a George Bailey life.

Saint Marty really has a wonderful life.

Confessions of Saint Marty