Witness to Another Ending
As I write this, I can look across the room at someone I love who is dying. Hospice has done what hospice does: made her comfortable, so that her passing can be as peaceful as possible.
I've been witness to a number of deaths. Strangers. Friends. My parents. A daughter. Each one left its mark, and as I've gotten older, those marks feel less like things that happened to other people and more like something coming for me. They remind me that the story I've been telling with my life will have a final chapter, and that my chances to shape it are getting fewer.
So what story will we leave? Does it matter what people remember? Or should we just eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die?
So many of the people I've worked with are convinced their story is already written, that the affair was the chapter that defined the whole book, and everything after it is just epilogue. I understand why it feels that way. But no book is remembered for its worst chapter. It's remembered for where it ends up.
However much of your story has already been told, the next chapter is still unwritten. Mine is too. Today I'm asking myself what I want to put in it.