Author’s photo of a red meditation cushion and a wooden meditation stool

Lonely Rivers Flow

I’ve Just Recently Rewatched Ghost, With Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. Yes, There Were Tears, Off-screen as Well as On

Sometimes you need an emotional release, even if it’s artificial. Even if it’s brought about by the manipulated emotional responses planned, filmed and edited by Hollywood’s best magicians.

When a family crisis drags on for over a month, when it reaches almost the six-week mark, and someone close is still balancing on that knife edge between life and death, feelings get to be a bit on the brittle side.

It’s got so I can’t look at my phone to check for messages or even make a call for fear of the missed call I don’t want.

The person most likely to be calling has been the one to call and break the news of the just-happened or pending death of both parents. Only this time, it’ll be my little sister, his wife of almost 40 years, who is the unwanted familial news headline.

And Time Goes by so Slowly

A couple of months have gone by since I wrote the above. Much has changed in terms of living on that knife’s edge. The emergency that filled the air within us all has passed. Both those physically close to my sister and those like myself, many miles distant, can claim their imaginations back.

We can breathe at last. She hasn’t breathed her last.

While she remains in hospital, there has been progress since the last of those serial emergencies. On the one hand, progress is frustratingly snail-slow, but on the other, it is thankfully snail-slow.

Because progress in this case means only one thing: that life persists.

Maybe the whole point of this is simply to say thank you for what we still have.

As always tell me in the comments what you thought