A vigil strange and wondrous she kept for that one long thirteen day night.
A meditation on terminal illness, loving presence and the return passage to the cosmos.
Two people side by side, one soon on the return path to the cosmos, the other keeping a vigil through days and nights, both on a journey, both doing struggle with and within themselves.
One in need of help and comfort and the other offering the help of comfort without any expectation or demand for miracles.
Two humans side by side, one whose body is losing the struggle and who’s mind is slowly turning inward and another whose body is sound and is in the present and of sound mind.
Both together for each other and for themselves.
In the beginning the days were days and nights nights. Slowly the days became nights and nights became as one. On the streets all could be measured by AM and PM.
On the inside each moment could be measured by the length of a song or a prayer, or of a question and an answer or by the silence.
One spoke no more of the cancer. The other did not even consider it anymore.
Their breaths no longer rolled like two seas in unison. As one grew shallow the other grew heavy until there was only one remaining.
Michael Marnin Jacobs
A Heavy Sea. 2021
A midnight debate amongst the stoic (2014)
A vision in Berlin
In a polluted city