The Quiet Work

It’s a gut feeling.

Don’t move too fast.

Don’t speak unless needed.

Trust them to figure it out.

The room changes.

There’s space to breathe.

For the family to just… be.

Something sacred will unfold,

uninterrupted.

In that tender, disorienting time,

it is best not to help.

Too much.

So, I wait.

In this season of my life,

in the soft inheritance of age,

my solitude feels like a long hallway

in a familiar house,

dim, and

quiet enough to hear myself breathe.

I walk past rooms

where I have stood before,

where soft souls still whisper.

The nursery, warm with milk and hours.

A hospital bed heavy with waiting.

A kitchen lit only by refrigerator light

at 3 a.m.

My hands that caught a baby

are the same hands that

extracted a splinter,

tended an angry fist thrown in shame,

caressed a naked stranger,

shifted a beloved body from bed to gurney.

I washed clothes and

folded towels that weren’t mine

in silence that absolutely was.

In each room, I was there.

Present.

The witness.

The still one.

No one claps.

No one thanks you.

And the transformation you hold space for

goes unseen.

This is the work, now.

The tender afterbirth of loneliness.

The kiss on the lips is long faded.

The blood in the womb is long gone.

To miss an arm across my shoulder,

or hands in my hair,

is to mourn a life that does not need grieving.

To stand beside my past

is the work of

a grateful heart.

The wood still shifts in the fire.

An ember sparks in the hearth.

The last of the umbilical cords

is severed:

To witness and not advise,

to heal and not shame,

to hold and not covet,

to release and not surrender.

This is where loneliness walks

beside wisdom,

and solitude becomes

an anticipated guest.

One you pull a chair out for

and wait for the kettle to sing.