A family we know in Virginia is in the hospital with their baby, who has leukemia. Across the hall is a young couple who has already lost one child, and has learned that their three year-old boy has advanced brain cancer, likely untreatable. The people we know overheard the young father whisper to his wife: "I can't bury another one of my children."

It drains all the life out of you to hear about them, these moments we keep from our minds, though they are all around us, little spots of hell here on earth. We get in a froth over which ill-educated talker is going to rule over us for a time, or worse, over why our favorite team can't seem to post enough wins. We moan because we aren't appreciated enough or wealthy enough or treated to more interesting sex. We come to think that all the world's aches are poured onto our shoulders, until we catch a glimpse of horror, and realize that this present pain is nothing. It is a blessing, compared to someone else's moment of hell.

So I offer up my weak prayers for this man I'll never know, and this child I can scarcely bear to think about, and feel impotent and ungrateful as I do it. And I wonder sometimes if the purpose of prayer is not to make things right, because if so then none of us has ever prayed, from the look of things on this broken planet. Perhaps it's simply to remind us that this is not our home, thank God, that this is not the final place for us. We pray, some of us, that the passing will be sweeter, and quicker. We pray that, if nothing else, we not be asked to bury all the ones we love before we rest.