We all bleed just the same – whether from the flesh, the heart-ache of loved ones lost, mental anguish. It makes no difference our political, religious, or social rank. It makes no difference our ethnicity or race or gender – identity of any kind. It makes no difference whether Gentile or Jew, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free – we all bleed just the same.
When I sit on my stoop in the early morning and talk to a hardened pain-in-the-butt regular who just arrived home on a bus from Florida, from his last parent’s funeral… wanting someone to acknowledge his crying grief and to just find someone to show his father’s Purple Heart, medals from Korea, his folded flag, the reference of his great-grandfather in a book about African-Americans in Seminole County – I know we all bleed just the same.
When a well-to-do uncle, husband, cousin, father, friend suddenly and unexpectedly dies on the operating table. When his funeral will be dignified and well attended in the midst of grief and heart-ache – know that we all bleed just the same.