A Waiting Place

Someone dear to us is fading now. She is in a narrow bed-boat in her quiet bedroom, waiting for what’s next. The stillness contrasts with the vibrant and boisterous springtime world outside her window––rollicking winds, the birds and bees, a profusion of fragrant blossoms. The curtains are open to blue skies and yellow mustard, but she isn’t looking out.

Yesterday a rocket launched from Vandenberg with a mighty boom, and reverberated for a long time, and I thought again how strange and wondrous life is, and how time circles about and meets itself, and how a grand lady from another century is dying while a rocket goes off in the sky above her.

And then in the night a motherly moon shone upon us all.

This morning, walking back from the mailbox, watching the grass tremble and the hills vibrate with color, this thought came to me:

There is no resolution, only acceptance, and there are no retakes, only ongoingness.

I'm not sure what it means, but it felt true.