The sudden drop in energy felt like a freight elevator in free fall: I could not inhale.

Slowly, I lowered myself upon the kitchen stool and took stock: I was on E, for empty, my brain feathery, my breathing flailing against my chest wall. Ashen whiteness eclipsed my thoughts and feelings. Then, the distress stopped. I inhaled, sipped water from my cup, and caught my neighbor’s flowering red-bud tree outside my window, its frothy pinkness the epitome of String’s effervescence.

More evidence of my lungs’ diminished functioning gave me pause. True, I’d cut back on the dose of Dexamethasone, but with that correction, my limited world was joggled back to life. Again, I could access words, the building blocks of psychic growth: without them, I am lost.

As with any terminal illness, mine teaches vital lessons of trust, each twenty-four hours allotted me. I had no say in the circumstances that birthed me over eighty-four years ago, and I’ve none as to when I leave. Death in my body will occur when it will.

So this episode in my kitchen is just another, and not that important to get worked up about. In time, this will change, and such a change it will be.

…Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for them that love him… (I Cor 2:9)

Such has been promised to us …