How Can It Be?

Living gratefully today, I notice my energy level after a night of rest. It is not the number of hours of rest that matters as much as the level of peace during rest. More restful sleep comes my way when I let go of the day just lived and don't yet pick up the day awaiting. 

Now, this day is here. And it marks an anniversary that is both one of pain and one of gratefulness. Two years ago today, May 11, 2019, was the last time I saw my sister Mary Jo alive. I said goodbye to her as she lay in her bed, hooked up to oxygen. Some of her last words to me were "I hope this doesn't happen to you."  

She was referring to the metastatic breast cancer that was weakening her further and would end her life a few weeks later, on June 16.  The few minutes I spent with her that day are with me in my heart, leaving a profound imprint. It was so very hard and also a true blessing to be able to spend that time together. 

How can it be 2 years already? How can it be that you had to suffer so much and leave your earthly existence so early?  How can it be that your opportunities to be you, and a wife, mother, Nana, sister, friend, ended because of cancer? 

More questions are added to the list as I sit in quiet reflection:

*How can it be that my mom is 90, my oldest brother 70, and my youngest already 50 for almost a year?

*How can I be halfway through my fifties already? 

*How can it be that our son Sam is done with his freshman year of college? 

*How can it be that the pandemic has been around for well over a year now?

*How can it be that deep pain and profound meaning exist in the same moment?  

These are not questions I will attempt to answer. The answer is really in acceptance. Acceptance that life is so uncertain and tenuous and beautiful and precious and fragile. In the acceptance, the roots of gratefulness take hold and begin to grow.