In the In-Between

I have yet to encounter anything more potent and real than impermanence, and the unknown. They hold a kind of mystery that pulls me in close, waking both reflection and inquiry. Life is our longest-shortest experience, and each day I am reminded of the temporary nature of my existence. It’s deep to contemplate. It is also what draws me into the layers of life. What is more important than to be alive enough to know that one day I will exit. The poignancy of this shakes me into wakefulness.

I am called into this, whatever this is to be—the gray area of tender pain, of aches from loss, of what comes when we pause and contemplate the fullness of the human experience. It is all wind and air; spring and fall. If we are fortunate enough, we see the seasons come and go, holding them loosely the way our lives, too, are loose.

My time sitting beside patients facing their mortality under the care of hospice, and of walking alongside others newly diagnosed with life-altering illness who find themselves in need of palliative care, keeps close what it means to inhale and exhale not knowing what breath turns of to ether. This life is made of many seasons, until finally all of the leaves fall and the trees go thin and bare.

Here, we are pausing to experience the in-between.