A pause.

This week among the hustle of preparations and parties and trees that remained bare...

I stopped. Time stopped. As I was witness to that vapourous

blurry world between life and death. Twice.

A particularly arduous birth I attended mid week (30 hours) gave me pause, reminding me of the heroic fight a mother and her babe have to come into this world.

Existing at that moment between Birth and Death is a fine line.

A line that must be crossed.

Each baby and mother wafts in the vapourous world for just a moment, before crossing that line to life. I always feel at a birth, my most sacred job is to be witness to, and protect that space.

Early this morning, I found myself at a good friends home...cleaning up resuscitation equipment bags left by EMT's...finishing cooking a dinner they were in the middle of preparing...protecting the space,

while a once dynamic and beautiful father of four lay in the ICU, attended to by family,

wafting in that same vaporous thinly veiled world between life and death.

His struggle just as hard.

He collapsed the night before, as they were preparing eggplant parmesan.

He rode his bike to work, swam in the ocean daily, was a vegetarian. Was in his forties.

He never revived. A machine is breathing for him as his family comes from all over the country to make their peace.

Alone in their home, as I swept the floor, my phone rang...the birth mother from earlier in the week called for help and support...the fierce jilting, I am alive, sound of a babies cry in the background.

"The wailing of the newborn infant is mingled with the dirge for the dead.” ~ Lucretius

Tonight, as we finally decorated our tree...amongst music and chatter of kids, as I placed the tiny leather baby shoes tied with a ribbon of my youngest...and the long ago made ornament of a can lid with glitter and a doily and a faded young picture of my 19 year old son...

I cried.

For life. For Death...For that thin moment in between.