It’s another one of those weeks where I really have a lot of my mind, but trouble writing about it.

One of the things is the passage of time. I’m not sure I really valued time as much as I do now before loved ones in my life started dying, which is a bit of a shame. When you’re young and lucky enough to be unaffected by great tragedies in life you just don’t have the experience of knowing yet.

I was lucky for decades of my life.

2007 was the first time I sat with a dying person. It was Mario’s mom. I can remember very distinct details from that time because I was hyper focused on the gravity of the situation. I can remember the way rays of sunshine were illuminating the room, the way everything in the room looked, the way his mom looked and the particularly rattling of her breath. Time seemed to expand. Seconds dragged on like the pause between beats of a heart that was slowly winding down.

And it struck me that I had not truly understood or perhaps fully noticed what being 100% present in a moment was until I sat with death in a room.

As you get further away from the event of a death, you tend to drift back into the rhythm of life and the hustle and bustle of days going by. I suppose that unless you are very much into meditation, most of us are not fully present everyday. I don’t like that.

I am someone who needs a number of “reminders” to drive a message home, but I absolutely understand the importance of presence at this point. I’m just going to try, every day, to really be there, even if it’s mundane and not monumental.