I looked across the bright blue tablecloth the staff used for decoration and practicality. Behind the older lady sitting uncomfortably slouched in a wheelchair across from me, attempting to eat between coughs, I saw him standing there.

When I looked over the lady’s shoulder, he hadn’t been there three seconds before. He was an older man dressed impeccably in a dark green suit. His eyes were wrinkled yet sparkling. The tall windows behind him didn’t seem to add any illumination to his profile. I could see the sun shining brilliantly down between the wings of the care facility.

When my eyes met his, I didn’t need to be introduced to know who he was. He nodded and smiled, which, under different circumstances, might have made me uncomfortable.

I nodded back, but I didn’t return his smile. Only time softly converts the repeated truth of reality into recognition, if not acceptance.

The older man looked at the framed picture in front of me. “What was will once again be,” he said, although his lips did not move.

It didn’t surprise me that I heard him in my head.

“You’re not here for her, at least not yet,” I insisted.

“No, but I’m always here. I am everywhere to untie the bind when it’s time for each of them.”

“She needs a little more time,” I answered in my head.

He shook his head. “No. Once the mind opens and self-awareness occurs, every moment is borrowed. Do you see the sunlight behind me? Smell the food in front of you? Do you not feel it when you hug her?”

“Yes.” I already knew the point. It had periodically been hammered into me throughout my years. Many of my worst moments were when the lesson slipped from my mind.

“What was will once again be. Take the pleasure and the people around you, and let it be enough. Looking forward or listening to the sounds of the grains in the glass is folly. Just as looking backward too long focuses you on what’s lost. You are here. Now.”

I closed my eyes briefly and listened to the myriad voices around me.

When I opened them, I lifted the soup spoon and gingerly fed it to the woman I was visiting.

There would always only be this moment. A long succession of them experienced individually.

For some, more. For others, fewer.

The voices, the smells, and presence.

We are all the same story, written in different verses and distinct melodies.

It is enough.

When I looked toward the window, the man was gone. The windows were dimmer, but a piece of me felt brighter. Truth is its own luminescence if we let it shine even into the dark corners of our lives.

Love, X
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