boundaries breached and broken

It was almost too easy to set up this blog. I think it took about 3 mins and I did it while under stress from the accident just a day or two before. But they don't give you an owner's manual with a blog; they don't suggest what to do or not to do. It appears as if the writer is just doing a diary--putting out thoughts that arise as one writes.

Of course, I know that putting words online means the words are "public" not private. But because I don't get responses hardly ever to the blog, after a while it feels as if no one is reading it. So I go on and on with the words on the "page."

Several days ago, I might have breached a boundary when I wrote about a kind and caring person who came to visit me. She is in her own exhausting cancer battle and yet, she has consistently been one of the handful of persons who have called to check on me and it was her idea to bring me a book. But as I wrote about her--with the motives of highlighting the goodness of her heart, the strength of her spirit, I may have crossed a boundary of her privacy. Even though I didn't name her, and don't name her here, if a couple of people we both know might read the entry, they would know who she is.

I wrote her, after the posting, to get her suggestions to edit out the passage but I haven't heard back from her, so my concern and worry has shifted into guilt. Hence, my private/public "amends" that I am posting today. I am going to learn from this lesson and keep my writing focused on me and not on others. If I shine the light on others, it will be more obliquely.

The remainder of my day today will have other moments of regret and sorrow: so many memories of family on Memorial Day, with many of the faces in the memories faded from the living. Stories of men and women since the Civil War who have died for ideals that we once proclaimed "unalienable" are now being denied and defined by geographical boundaries, particularly south of the "border."

As we, as individuals and member of a common country, stumble through this day, I wonder how many of us will remember boundaries we have crossed--sometimes we crossed these boundaries with permission but often just because we could.