in the abyss...between endings and beginnings

"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet." — Emily Dickinson
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So many aphorisms--tomorrow is not promised, we always think we have time, nothing lasts forever. 

​​It’s in the moments when these words come alive that we feel the full weight of their truth. When life splits into before and after—a diagnosis, an accident, a catastrophe, an ending. In those instants, time and breath seem to stop. Every detail imprints itself on us, seared into our minds by the sharp edge of reality.

It is the pause between what was and what will be. The space where we realize—there is no going back. Life has changed irrevocably.

And then it begins—the mind races, scrambling for a way out, to undo, to go back, to make it not real. A million dead-end solutions play out in our panicked thoughts—practical, fantastical—grasping at something, anything, as the ground beneath us disappears. Anger, fear, disbelief. We are caught in a maelstrom of emotions—that, pit-in-the-stomach, moment when reality forces itself into our consciousness.

Regrets bombard us—every declined invitation, every sunrise we slept through, every moment we let slip by without truly living it. They all pile up—missed opportunities, unlived experiences, echoes of what could have been. Even as we mourn the memories that will never be, our mind fights to hold on, to remember—the sound of a voice, the smell of perfume, the softness of the fur beneath our hands, the way it felt to run wild in the wind.

And then come the questions—Why?
Why me? Why not me? Why now?
Why, why, why...
But answers don’t come. And life is never the same.

The impermanence of it all. What is, what was, what might have been.

Yet, even in this space of sadness and loss, something stirs—beginnings. A newness. Things yet to be. This is where life lives-in the going on.

​But if we refuse to let the book close, if we cling to the last page, we snuff out any possibility of joy that could have been. We pile more lost moments into the graveyard of regret.

What we didn’t want to end has already ended.  What we didn’t want to happen has happened.

Yet we prolong the suffering, feebly trying to apply a bandage over a wound too deep to be covered. A futile attempt to shield ourselves from the harshness of reality.

We don’t know how to move on.
We refuse to give ourselves permission to move on.
We ask—how do we walk forward when our vision of the future has been shattered?

When we can’t picture joy ahead, when we are cloaked in darkness, the idea of light feels like a betrayal. And when, for a fleeting moment, light dares to shine—and our spirit stirs in response--
We smother it.
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We find it unthinkable that our life will somehow go on. That new memories are waiting for us, and that we might even smile again.​

If we dare to live.
(read a variation on Medium)