Lessons

I've embraced the intense schedule that has become my summer.  I've struck a balance between long days in a NJ hospital and those spent with writers weaving fiction in Los Angeles.  In between I'm trying to wring out as much life as possible to make up for those too ill to partake in simple activities.  My father is alive, but his days are still spent in bed, dependent on others to change his clothes, urinate and eat.  For selfish reasons I'm grateful he's still with us.  In a few days I will be able to hold his hand and tell him I love him, but it's hard for me to examine his current life and label it as living.  This experience has caused me to scrutinize my own existence through a more discriminating lens.  “Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”  One of my biggest fears is that I will look back on my life and answer Mary Oliver's question with a yes.  How to engage purposefully without filling up the hours with clutter.  That's the challenge.  I feel my father hovering above me, suspended in limbo between here and what comes after.  His current state a reminder there are no do overs, there's only now.