Yesterday I learned that a dear friend is dying.  There is no time to visit.  No time to wrap up loose ends.  This news just rips it all back open–that wound that I thought was nearly healed.  The blow from my fall where I realized that death is actually a part of the human story.  My story.  The story of those that I love.

This hurts.

How singular and rich and inimitable one voice can be.  All the music of it. The deep, lyrical, easiness of speech.  The words forming phrases and sentences and conversations that are uniquely alive in the moment and then are replayed as memories.  Laughter that starts in the eyes and crescendos into an unforgettable song.

How precious it is to sit around a table with someone that you love and eat homemade pizza and listen to a true story, directly from the mouth of the one who lived it.  With embellishments.  With exaggerations.  With hand motions and emphatic pauses.  What an indescribable gift it is to look across a room and see a friend drinking coffee.  Alive. Responding.  Speaking as if singing.  Breathing as if praying.

What a blessed, beautiful gift it is to have life and breath.  To speak.  To sing.  To laugh.  To cry.  To think. To feel.  To remember.  To love deeply and be loved in return.

I just cannot get over how beautiful life is.  My heart is broken over it.

In the stark reality of loss, I am awake, more than ever, to the miracle of ordinary life.    I walk forward into that as bravely as I know how.

On this side of eternity, this moment is all that I have with the ones I hold dear.  There is no time for fear or regret.  There is no time for bitterness or unforgiveness.

In this life, there is only time for decisive, courageous, and open-hearted love.