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I open my eyes, stare at the ceiling. The sun is blazing in the huge 15-foot window in my brother’s living room.  Never in my life have I felt this way.  Never in my life have I awakened, nauseated for the day I know in my heart, is coming.

It is 7 am.  I am awake ahead of my alarm. I am not surprised really.  It took me hours to fall asleep last night and the little sleep I had was light and restless.  I might as well get off the couch and make something to eat.  Nothing sounds appetizing but I know food will be a vitally important fuel for me today.  Eggs.  I can do eggs.

I turn on the gas stove and let my brother, Forest, and sister-in-law, Carolyn, sleep.  They don’t need to be up yet.  I decide cheese would be a welcome addition to the unwanted food.  After rustling around in their fridge, I find aged, shredded parmesan.  I normally love parmesan, so this must be a good combo.  Wrong.  Did you know that 4-year aged parmesan will make the only eggs in the house completely inedible? Yeah, I didn’t know that either.  Should I have some coffee? God, I just want to lay back down on the couch and pretend that this day is not this day.  My heart lifts and lodges in my throat keeping both words and tears from exiting my body.

When Forest and I left the hospital yesterday, I knew.  I knew with that certain feeling of a daughter watching her precious father laying on the hospital bed, that it was time to call my husband, Chris.  The conversation was short this time, there was much to plan.  “Hey honey, make arrangements, I am flying you and the girls in tomorrow morning.  You’ll land in San Francisco at 9 AM.”  God, can this really be happening? Maybe I am wrong. No, I feel this in my bones, in my very soul.  Everyone here will be trying to breathe their own air.  I will need my people.

The day is here.  Chris and the girls fly in in two hours.  Mom is going to pick them up from the airport and bring them to her and my stepdad, Bob’s, house in the East Bay.  I can’t move.  I cannot eat, especially these eggs I botched.  “Aura, FOCUS.  Get up.” I mentally coax myself.  Today I need to be strong for my Dad.  Let’s start with brushing my teeth.

11 AM. By 11AM, Kaiser San Francisco will let Forest and I through security and all COVID-19 restrictions to see our father, who is there in ICU, which is doubling as the COVID wing.  At least I still have time.  Maybe I can stomach some coffee.  Forest is still sleeping when my phone rings.  It is a 415-area code that I have come to identify as one of the doctors at Kaiser San Francisco.

“Hello, this is Aura. Good morning. — You are taking his balloon pump out NOW?  We agreed yesterday that you were going to take him off dialysis, then remove the balloon pump, un-intubate him and wake him up around 11?  Why are we moving it up almost 3 hours?… My brother and I are still in the East Bay.  With traffic we are an hour away.  After you remove the balloon pump from his heart and it does what we know it might, well, we will not be there in time….  Yes, I understand.  We will leave as soon as we can.  Please make sure we get passed security.  Thank you.  Goodbye.”

Shit.

“Daddy, we are coming!!!,” I think to myself. I wake Forest up and hurriedly tell him our crappy news, that they are moving Dad’s procedure up by 3 hours which means that we need to fly!  Forest looks how I feel, like if maybe he can go back to sleep, this nightmare could not possibly be a reality, we would both wake up and realize it was all just a really really bad dream.

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Two weeks earlier.

I am sitting in my Pacifica van parked on the grass outside the fence and just beside the big jet hangar at Mankato Regional Airport.  I am just thinking how good this Jimmy John’s unwich is when Dad calls.  I answer as I always do but his voice on the other side of the line sounds strained, stressed.  I am not shocked because Dad’s work often left him stressed, but my intuition tells me something else is to be discovered here.

“Are you watching your client’s checkride?”

“Of course, I am!” He knows that watching a checkride just entails me listening to my aviation radio for calls that would indicate where in the sky they are as well as being nervous for my student despite that by the time I send them to their checkride, they are ready.

“How are you feeling Dad?”

“I am OK.” Pause. “Uncle Bob died in his sleep yesterday.”

Ho-ly crap.  My Dad’s other brother died less than a year ago.  Uncle Bob was the youngest among them.

The Gregory Clan, save my immediate family, has never been awfully close.  Uncle Bob was the closest sibling to my Dad in affection.

“Oh Dad! I am so sorry.  How are you taking this news?”

“Well, I’m really sad.”

In that moment, 2,000 miles apart, I could feel my Dad weighing his own mortality.  None of his siblings, his sister nor two brothers had close to the health problems Dad has.  Yet, here he is, the last man standing. 

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For 40 years, Dad was a type 1 diabetic.  Then, in 2008, at the age of 57, he got matched for a pancreas/kidney transplant.  Overnight and for the first time in nearly his entire adult life, he was not diabetic anymore.

40 years of diabetes takes its toll on anybody.  Dad has neuropathy in both his feet, and it shows with collapsed Charcot Joints and nearly fused ankles, along with the classic diabetic look of his calves.  Dad has fought for years to keep his feet healthy.  It has been a constant battle for him over that past ten years with bouts of infections that would turn into gangrene, take more of his nerve endings, here, and claim a big toe as its victim, there.

Forest and I encouraged Dad to let the doctors take his feet.  The prosthetics these days are amazing, and it would be easier on his heart if it were not trying to push blood through the collapsed swamplands that are the veins in his feet.  

“I am rather attached to my feet.” Dad says, unaffected by our serious teasing. I think he means it without the pun.

For 12 years, Dad’s transplants, who he lovingly calls “his buddies”, were plugging along, giving Dad a better quality of life than he had had many years earlier when he was on dialysis. Though two years ago, thanks to anti-rejection drugs that suppress the immune response so the body does not kill the transplants, Dad developed the BK Virus, which attacks transplant kidneys.  Much to his chagrin, Dad found himself back on dialysis these past two years but not diabetic again because the transplant pancreas was still going strong.

Three days a week, five hours after he left his house, he reenters it, exhausted, having had his blood artificially filtered through dialysis. Dad’s health has not been perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but he is stubborn and pushes through any of his ailments.

Here, I find myself sitting in my van at the airport listening to Dad measure his own mortality, through the silence. He hurts.  I hurt. Losing Uncle Bob is unexpected.

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Forest and I hop into Dad’s grey Sonata Hybrid Limited that I have been driving the past week that I have been in California.  45 minutes later we arrive at Kaiser San Francisco.  I pull the Sonata into one of the spots in the parking garage I had become accustomed during my visits this week.  Only by the grace of God had I been able to visit during the pandemic.  I turn off the car.  The radio, Forest, myself; silence.  Forest and I glance at each other.  There is no way to be ready to get out of this car.  Dad is probably starting to come off sedation after having respirator removed and the balloon pump that was placed in his heart, filling at the exact perfect moment to keep his blood pumping properly.  The theory is that by some miracle, after the pump is removed, Dad’s heart will be strong enough to do the job on its own.  On this Thursday morning, theory is not reality. 

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The reality is that a week ago, the same day Dad found out his last brother died, Dad had a mild heart attack.  No one, including himself knew about it.  He had already been feeling tired all the time and even the short trip from his car into the dialysis center would leave him wanting air and needing to sit down to relax enough to get it. 

“Aura, I need to call you back.  I have to catch my breath.”

I knew this was not just fatigue.  I feared COVID-19. Dad’s drug suppressed immune system would be the perfect petri dish for virus. I waited a few minutes and called him back to tell him that I wanted to navigate his health system to get him checked out and tested.  He was not excited about the idea, Dad always preferred to help others before himself but even he could not deny that something was amiss.  I contacted a nurse at Kaiser, 3-way called Dad back, by which time he was hooked up to the dialysis machine.

After answering many questions, Dad, the nurse, and myself all decided that immediately following dialysis that night, Dad needed to check into the hospital to get examined. My Dad hated hospitals.  They usually told him that he was worse than he believed himself to be and that they wanted to keep him longer than he wanted and therefore the longer he was away from his work and caring for the clients of his financial planning business.

After we got off the phone with the nurse, Dad called out my worry.

“Don’t you dare cancel your trip.  I will check into the hospital.  They won’t allow you to visit anyway.”

I was due to fly across the country to pilot a trip for a client, then fly back to Minneapolis a couple of days later.  Dad knew me, he always came first and this time, he specifically wanted me to take the trip.

The trip was uneventful and while I was in the 2-hour cab ride to the St. Louis Airport, I had the most amazing conversation with Dad.  For the first time in so long, he was vibrant and energetic.  He was in the hospital and tests had indicated he had had a heart attack.  He was genuinely excited because tomorrow they would be performing an angiogram, where they insert dye into the heart and take images to see its function or lack thereof.

“Aura, if you wouldn’t have called to get me in here, I couldn’t be getting fixed.  Thank you, Peanut!”

Wow.  Dad, grateful I got him into the hospital. That’s a first.

While eating lunch at the St. Louis airport I texted Dad.

 “What do you think about Blue Lakes Aviation for my business name?”

“Sounds good!” , he wrote back.

I shared with him a couple of my stepdad’s funny business name ideas such as “White Knuckle Aviation Group” and “Wing and a Prayer Flying Circus”. I knew Dad’s satiric humor would get a kick out of those.

Little did anyone know that upon inserting the dye into my Dad’s weak heart, the viscosity would cause the blood to back flow and put him into cardiogenic shock. With his life now hanging in a balance the staff was forced to intubate him, insert a balloon pump into his heart through his femoral artery, and as fast as possible, get him in an ambulance to transfer him from Kaiser Walnut Creek to Kaiser San Francisco.

Mom, Dad’s ex-wife, and lifelong friend, was there, standing outside of Kaiser Walnut Creek on the phone with me as they loaded my precious unconscious father into the ambulance.  As I heard the sirens from Dad’s ambulance begin to fade through the phone, another sound shocked me into the moment more than the ambulance sirens carrying my Dad away; my Mom burst out into a guttural wail.

Yesterday Dad was vibrant, excited for the angiogram to give us answers followed by a surgery to fix his heart.  Now, due to that very angiogram, Dad is fighting for his life, or at least in his unconscious state, the machines are fighting for him.

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Now at the entryway of Kaiser San Francisco, Forest and I get our temperatures checked then show our IDs, get our sticker print out to get passed security and escort ourselves through the halls I have learned all-to-well this week.  Out of the elevator, I do not know who reaches for whom, but Forest and I are hand-in-hand walking toward the double doors that lead to the ICU wing and our Dad.

When we get to Dad’s room, the curtain is open and the large glass door is slid back for the first time in a week.  Dad looks like a free man; no dialysis machine hooked into the jugular vein in his neck, no respirator on his face and forehead, no blood pressure cuff, only one IV in his hands.

I did not know what to expect.  Each time the doctors took him off his sedation to wake him up, heavy and sometimes brutal hallucinations would follow.  Each time we witnessed it, Dad would try to protect Forest and I, tell us we were not safe and that we should leave.  What he said now though will forever implant into my memory.  As Forest and I approach his room, Dad looks over at us.

“Ah, you’re here. Great! Let’s go!”

Forest walks to Dad’s left side and I stay at his right.  He lifted both his arms, inviting us to grab them with ours.  He starts to pull himself up against our weight.

“Help me up. Let’s go home… Ouch, that hurts!”

Gently I tell Dad that the pain is at his groin where they have a ratchet pressure belt wrapped around his body and pressing firmly over the point where they recently removed his balloon pump. It’s preventing him from bleeding out.

He is still not convinced and my words get stuck in my dry throat.

“Oh Daddy, the only way you’re leaving here today will be without your body.”

Dad looks over at Forest, then me.  His hands are still in ours.  Clearly his is thinking, “What are you talking about, Aura? Let’s go!”

For a moment, seeing my precious Father nearly swinging his legs over the side of his hospital bed to make a grand thanks-for-all-the-help-guys-I’m-all-better-and-my-kids-are-taking-me-home, exit, I imagine the possibility of wheeling Dad out of here; bringing him home to relax and heal, maybe watch a movie, our favorite pastime.  I refocus.  I know that this fantasy is exactly that, a fantasy.

These previous days of Dad being here, I have learned a lot about his condition.  The angiogram that wiped out his possibility of life also identified for us that his heart is weak, he has a leaky valve and he has a blockage in his right coronary artery that has been there long enough that the heart miraculously started making its own bypass providing blood to the right atrium, heart ventricles and right atrial wall.  In short, on top of needing a bypass, he needs a heart valve replaced.  Though we now know this information, there is nothing we can do about it.  His heart is in cariogenic shock and not strong enough to keep him alive though surgery.  The risks are too high, and no heart surgeon anywhere will risk it.  Not-to-mention Dad’s health care directive tells Forest and I that he does not want any experimental surgeries that will only prolong his death.

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I have always been Dad’s person, and he, mine.  Even before my parent’s divorce, I knew how to take his blood sugar level and give him a shot of insulin or feed him sugar, usually in the form of juice.  Any time Dad needed me, even when he did not know he did, I was on a plane from Minnesota, sometimes toting both girls and the dog.  Most recently he had two very intensive and life-threatening hospital stays in January.  When I came back from the second 1-week stay caring for Dad, my job, full-time flight instructor for a large flight school, was not waiting for me anymore.  I understood.  They said that they were sorry about my Dad’s poor health, but it was time that we parted ways.  I understood, business is business.  I never told Dad that was the reason they gave me.  What can I say about a job lost over the right decision to care for one’s father? Family comes first.  My Dad was more important that any job. 

Last night when Forest and I were by his side he said in slow, slurred speech,

“Aura, look at my feet.”

I move toward the foot of his hospital bed, fulfilling a strange request to look at his feet. Every day and many times throughout my life I have massaged his feet but this was different. He has on a Bearhug which is a brilliant, weightless blanket that is disposable and connects at the foot of the bed to a heater that blows it up to look like the inflatable pool loungers we used when we were teenagers.  I lift both his Bearhug and the blanket beneath it to stare at his feet. The toes and knuckle joints are turning black, a sign that his heart is not keeping up anymore.  I look left to my Dad.  Tears fill my eyes.

“Oh Daddy! That’s not good!”

“No,” he responds slowly.

Forest asks what is wrong. Somberly I say,

“His feet are…dying.”

We both break down.

Dad has fought all our lives for the health of his feet.  This, more than anything else we knew, if Dad cannot walk out of here, he probably will not be leaving here.

Somewhere in a dying body, there is a lucid, coherent soul communicating with us.  I feel the subtle movement of Dad’s hand on mine, squeezing me to say “I love you, Aura. I loved you before you were born, I will love you after I die.”

Dad awakens just enough to look over at my brother.

“Forest”

Then he reaches out his hand, places it on Forest’s stomach, standing next to him and Forest holds it there.  They stare at each other; Forest’s eyes pink with emotion, Dad’s are emotionless but seemingly looking directly into Forest’s soul.

During the time Dad is asleep and Forest and I are holding one of Dad’s hands in each of ours, the nurse says to us,

“He must be a magnificent man seeing how much you both love him.”

Forest nods a confirmation and I say,

“He is.”

I push my chair back, lean forward and rest my head on the side of the hospital bed, Dad’s hand around mine and reminisce.

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I am 14 years old; Dad and I are driving home on highway 680 North, just passing the Willow Pass Road exit. My hair is long, to my elbows, natural dirty blonde and held half up by a hair clip with sterling silver running horses and a small triangular shaped piece of turquoise on each side.

Dad glances at me and says, “Aura, you are growing into a lovely young woman.  I am proud of you.  I am proud to be your father.”

How does one feel a lifetime of love in a moment?  I look at him as he is driving and humbly say,

“Thank you, Dad.”

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I am almost 19 years old; my birthday is in a few days.  It’s hard to believe that only a month ago Dad and Forest drove me, my black 1995 Volkswagen Jetta and as much stuff as I could fit in it, to Minnesota.  I came here to go to university and live with my grandparents.  After dropping Dad off at Minneapolis International Airport so he could fly home, I cried so hard that I could barely see the road.  Any time I leave him, I leave part of me with him.

I walk down to the mailbox at my grandparent’s house and find a package waiting for me. It’s just in time for my birthday.  I am excited because I love receiving packages and letters in the mail. The contents I find in the box, I will cherish forever. Wrapped in tissue paper is the most beautiful bracelet I have ever seen.  Instantly, I recognize the work as my Dad’s.  I turn it over in my hand to look for an inscription, “SPG~Celestial Path”.  I can only imagine the amount of hours Dad spent designing and creating this most spectacular piece for me.  I can’t remember the names of the mines the turquoise comes from but I remember that he had very little of that kind left and the mines are long since closed.

It fits me perfectly. Celestial Path. One of our favorite pastimes is laying under the stars, pointing out constellations and Dad telling me the associated myths.  It is fitting he would name this bracelet from our journey through the stars.

Maybe a foreshadowing of my future career?

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Today, In his hospital bed, Dad is talking less and less. He starts to wince,

“Ouch!!!” 

The nurses have long since removed the pressure belt over his groin.  He starts to wiggle, lift his shoulders, try to relax, and again says,

“Ouch.”

I ask the nurse why he is in pain. Respectfully and gently, she tells us that when the body starts to shut down, it hurts. I nod my understanding.

“OK, we want you to give him something for his pain but do NOT knock him out, he is still talking to us.”

She had previously ordered a drug in anticipation, scanned Dad’s ID on his wrist and inserted the drug into his IV. Dad relaxes.

So, it begins.  Over nearly 30 years of being an equestrian, I have put down, euthanized, many horses.  In this moment, leaning over my precious Dad, the man who I thought would grow old enough to watch his four granddaughters grown up, is dying.  I cannot help but feel like I am putting him down, like a horse. Though I do not want him to suffer, ever.  I want him here longer. I want to hear his laugh and see his smile when we go to Pacifica Beach again and surf together. I want to look at him through dive goggles 50 feet under the ocean’s surface as we teach Kaia and Chiara how to SCUBA dive, like he did with me. How the hell are we going to get through this?!  Is it possible to live through a loss like this?

I remember hearing Dad tell me several times over the years during one of our daily phone conversations,

“Aura, you are strong, there is nothing you cannot do. I admire you.”

So, I look at my Dad and I tell him the truth.

“Daddy, I love you.  I love you more than words can ever express.  You know that already.  There is nothing unsaid between us and I feel peace with that. But you must know this; when you die, we will be shattered. Our lives will never be the same without you in them.  I have no idea how we are going to live without you, but we will.  We are going to be OK. We are going to be OK, Daddy.  You do not need to worry about us.”

I cry while I stroke my fingers through his hair and memorize the wrinkles in his tan face.

Sometime later, it dawns on me that I have not prayed for my father, specifically for guidance on him making the journey to crossover.  I am a private person with unwavering faith.  I prefer to pray privately.  In fact, I prefer most of my life remain private. Though, now I am here in the hospital with the two men I love most in this world aside from Chris, and I lean over my Dad and pray:

“Lord, Jesus, Angels, Archangels, Unnamed Angels, please be with my father as he begins his journey to you.  Show yourselves to him now so he may have peace in these final hours he is with us and beyond. Give Forest and I peace, strength, and guidance so we may know how to navigate our future lives without our Dad. Show yourselves to him, Lord. Amen”

I sit down, take Dad’s hand again in mine and lift the blanket enough to see it.   I have his hands.   I will always remember the shape and the feel of my Dad’s hands. 

A half hour later, Dad awakens from his nap. He looks up.  Slowly his eyes wander left, then right, then straight ahead. 

I ask him, “What do you see?”

He looks as though he is focusing on something beyond the ceiling.  He continues to look around slowly.  Then it dawns on me. I conjured Angels.

“Daddy, do you see Angels?”

Dad is non-verbal at this point. Without looking at me, slowly he nods his head in confirmation.  Naturally, Forest and I look to the place he is looking, me secretly desiring to see passed the veil. Hospital ceiling is all we see.

For a moment, sitting in the hospital, watching my Dad, watch angels I can feel but cannot see, I feel peace. I think not of the future without my Dad or the fact that I am 37 and the rest of my life and my family’s lives will be lived without my Dad in them.  Instead, I feel this moment of no regrets.  Every moment my Dad has ever needed me, I have been there, loving him and caring for him like he and my Mom did for me. He has never abandoned me and always given me great advice; sometimes the kind that is not easy to hear, like a great parent does. There is nothing I would change about this life with him.

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In December 2001, I had moved to Minnesota to go to university and live with my grandparents.  It was really a response to get out of California for a while after my parents’ amicable divorce.  I intended to return but did not know that Chris would be waiting for me there.  A month after moving to Minnesota, having just turned 19, I met Chris.  I knew without the shadow of a doubt that he was my mate.  I married him at 21. More than half of my life I have lived 2,000 miles away from my parents.

A couple of years back when I was expressing regret about missing so much time with Dad. His response was perfect, as usual,

“Aura, you have to live YOUR life.”

I have been living mine.  Yet, in the busyness of it, of marriage, children, career; Dad was right.  I have never stopped living my life with him either.  In fact, our distance has made us closer and we never took each other for granted.

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After Dad saw the Angels, he went to sleep.  Forest and I are mostly silent.  Holding the hand of the man we admire. Death is a process.  The body takes its time shutting down, like the longest jet shutdown checklist I have ever experienced, except way more advanced.  Dad’s breathing starts to labor and in his gasps of air, he makes a honking noise. The nurse gives him another drug and assures us that he is not experiencing any longing for air, that he is not suffering.  She tells us that this is the process.  I really look at her and hear one of my favorite Star Wars characters, the Mandalorian, answer in her stead, “This is the way.”

So, this is death.  I have lost both sets of grandparents. The older I was and the longer I lived life with that person, the harder the loss. But my father.  Is this really happening?  One look at my brother and I know it is. I also feel fluid seeping from Dad’s hand onto mine, another sign that the end is near. His breathing is becoming few, and far between.

The nurse has turned the monitor around so we could not see his blood oxygen level or heart rate anymore. She said it was no longer accurate and we can just be with him. I am numb. I believe this but do not believe it.  I walk around the other side of the bed to be close to my brother.  I can feel the time is near.

By the time our Father takes his last gentle breath, I can still see the pulse in his neck. His heart is giving its final goodbye. I keep staring at his body, expecting him to wake up, but can feel he is no longer there.

Our Dad, Stephen Paul Gregory, died at 4:45 PM on July 9, 2020. He was 69 years old.

After learning from the social worker what will happen next, she gave us a packet of paperwork. We were free to go. This time leaving the hospital and for the first time in our lives, we did not have a Dad.  Forest and I took each other’s hand, looked at the body of our beloved father, one last time and walked out of the hospital room.

We feel everything and nothing. Denial is a beautiful human tool.  Without it, we would not survive some of the human experience, like saying goodbye to one’s father.  Back at the car, we get in, shut the doors, and sit in silence.  I realize, then find a moment for a light heart; Of course, Dad would die at rush hour in San Francisco.  This is his satire, and it is not lost on me.  This gives Forest and I more than an hour to talk.  We don’t call or text our families to give them the news.  This is not news that one delivers through a text or phone call.

We talked about how we are going to work through his estate over the coming months. We both agreed that our relationship is worth more than anything in Dad’s estate.  Thanks to my Mom, Dad had a trust and that would keep everything out of probate. We were both true to that statement because money nor belongings have separated us. 

I dropped Forest off at his house where Carolyn and the girls were.  Next, it was my turn.  During the 15-minute drive I took the time to feel about how best to tell my family.  I had not seen them in two weeks. When I walked into the door at my childhood home, Bob was sitting on the couch to my left, Kaia in a chair. Chris was out back. Like an astute 12-year-old, Kaia looked at me, trying to gage how to act through my behavior.

“Come here dear,” I said.  I pulled her into my arms. “Papa, died today.”

She burst into tears and I held her. Behind me, Bob said in anguish, “Oh no!” Chris walked in from the back yard. I told him. We all held each other and cried.

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Since Dad died, I have been growing every day.  I have experienced the darkest sadness of my life as well as the most brilliant perspective of living.  Dad was only three months away from retirement at the time of his death.  For a long time, his life was consumed with work. His health came second only until it demanded his attention.  God knows best and I feel deeply that He took Dad at just the right moment, even though no moment would have been right for me.

After I broke my back in 2016, I asked myself, “What do I REALLY want?”  I answered my question and became a pilot.  After losing my Dad in 2020, I asked myself again, “What do I REALLY want?”  I want to LIVE. I want to watch my daughters grown up, not to look back and wish I would have. I want to grow every day with Chris and create new adventures.  I want to do work that I love, so in the months following Dad’s death, I started Blue Lakes Aviation so I can contract pilot jets and other airplanes and bought an airplane to do specialty training.  I want to leave the people I meet, and maybe even those I don’t meet, better than I found them.  I want to make a positive difference in the world.

It takes courage to change.  I am constantly morphing into the new Aura Austin.  Sometimes I do not like what I see in myself and aspire to change again.  I try to say, “thank you” and “you’re welcome” more than I need to say, “I’m sorry”.

It hurts me that the majority of my life will be lived without my Dad.  Yet, I am grateful that I had him for 37 years of it. The poem my Dad wrote many years ago, sits on my bedside table and sums up life beautifully.

What is the world

but that which we

build around us

and the people we gather

around us

and the things we collect

to surround us

the places we go

the things we know

what we eat

that special seat

where we gather our thoughts

each thinks his world

is better or worse

and still its all up

to our own choosing

It’s all up to our own choosing.