What I see

One of the reasons I want to have children is to experience the world for the first time through their eyes. Every experience is new at some point, and there is much to be learned from remembering that.

Yesterday I discovered the corollary. My grandmother is dying - her body is riddled with cancer and she's in pain most of the time now. I'm up in Maine as I write this to be with family as this final chapter in her life is written. My sister was here through yesterday, when she has to return to Washington statet to go back to her internships, completing vet school. And as she stood over grandma's bed, looking down into her eyes, saying goodbye, and as grandma looked back up at her with a smile on her face, I had this image that this may be the last time that either one of them sees eachother again.

I've been searching for the gift that grandma has to offer me in this time. What final life leason can she offer me as she completes her life journey? And I've come to this: just as there is value in experiencing the world in the morning sun for the first time, there is value in see the world in the light of the setting sun, for the last time. In order to learn how to say hello, we must learn how to say goodbye. That is her gift to me.