The night before the election, I was outside having a vape and looking up at magnificent lineup that is Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and the Moon on their nightly sojourn when a neighbor walked up; a young flight attendant in her mid-20s who is a highly intelligent Black woman that I have struck up many a conversation with over the months (us Southerners tend to keep an eye out for each other in non-Southern environs).

We had a discussion around the current “State of Affairs” in the neighborhood. After all, what else is there to talk about on the Hill these days, especially when we almost have to yell at each other just to hear over the sirens of the police on their nightly tirade through the neighborhood.

I asked her how her flight went. She said it was a long haul and she only had an 11-hour layover home before flying out again tomorrow morning. Having had many, many members of my family in the airline industry, I gave her my most heartfelt condolences.

That is when she said, “I don’t want to be here tomorrow night. I think I’d rather be sequestered into a hotel room. There’s going to be violence tomorrow. A lot of it.”

I nodded and agreed. “Yeah, that much is certain. I think I’m just gonna hang around here. See what happens. Maybe being a middle-aged woman with some triage and de-escalation skills, I can do some good.”

She nodded and said, “I believe in God. I voted and now I put it all in God’s hands. It’s up to Him.”

I nodded in agreement. “I’m a Secular Humanist and Stoic. My view is that I’ve done the one thing I can do that’s in my control – I voted. Now, I just wait and prepare for what is outside of my control; tomorrow. So, it sounds like we’re both on the same page.”

She smiled and said, “Yeah, it kinda does! Have a good night, okay and stay safe tomorrow!”

“Yes, and you go get some rest – 9:30 am will be here before you know it!” She groaned at that one.

Then I felt something come on me, a twinge. “May I bother you for just a second more?”

She turned and said, “Yeah?”

I said, “Today is the end of Dia de Muertos and my family is upstairs visiting, so to speak. I just felt a little bit of tug from them, and we all wish you Vaya con Dios tomorrow and for your safe return.”

[A brief clarification of the difference between Dia de Muertos and Cinco de Mayo ensues before returning to Vaya con Dios.]

“What does that mean?”

“’Go with God’. Another way of saying, ‘May God watch over you.’”

She immediately and instinctively said, “In Jesus’s name, we pray.”

I nodded in full communion with her and said, “Amen.”

“You’re an interesting species, an interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we found that makes the emptiness bearable, each other.”

Alien to Dr. Arroway – “Contact” (1997)