It’s the morning rush hour.

I am looking out at the freeway and the busy parking lot. Cars rush by.  People race to work, to start a new day. Everyone preoccupied with “life”.

I just came over here from the Assisted Living facility, having just wheeled my mom in her wheelchair to breakfast. That’s the world I am temporarily living in. I’ve been staying with her, helping her get 24 hour care, in this final phase in the progression of the cancer invading her body.

This trip to the coffee shop is my brief respite.

What a contrast, the slow pace of life in my mom’s darkened quiet room, mostly sitting, and occasionally helping her out of bed, or wheeling her to lunch, or rubbing her back, as we wait out these last days. And here I now sit, watching the world rush on by as I savor the taste and smells of the coffee. I feel as if I am briefly pausing “somewhere in between”.

I can’t help but look at each person dashing into the coffee shop, and think about what they might look like, forty years later, and how life will be so different for them then. We tend to not think about that. I think about all the precious individuals in the Assisted Living facility and Nursing Home here, and wonder what filled their lives forty years earlier.

If only we could keep life in perspective as we live it. We get so caught up in our worlds as we deal with life’s challenges, and we don’t think much about how life will be later, and all too often we forget about those who are living out their final days alone.

I appreciate this moment and smile. I have a grateful heart, feeling so full of love right now for my mom, and for my dad whose life was cut short by cancer 19 years ago. I am sorry we lost him so long ago, but I am still grateful for his life. I could focus on the painful events that will likely unfold soon with my mom, but for this moment in time I feel such gratitude for the lives we’ve been given. Yes, I am grateful to have had this cup of coffee and appreciate this moment spent “somewhere in between.”
 

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