Sitting in this dark hospital room, waiting for sleep to come, I’m awash in blue light and even bluer feelings. I don’t know what it is about change, or a break in my routine, but it always brings me down so low. Maybe I just miss my kids, or maybe my soul knows that something is changing forever and ever and it just wants to grieve a little bit. When this happens, I just try to remind myself that it will end, and that this is a wave I need to ride until the swell dies. Soon enough I will find myself on earth again.

There is a lot of death and sickness in my periphery. People in my axis are either coming face to face with their mortality, or have a loved one who is. Our community is feeling very rocked by these painful realities. While my own husband is nowhere near that kind of struggle, knowing these things while waiting another week for biopsy results has put me in a kind of limbo I don’t understand. I’ve decided to just live life as close to normal next week, and deal with each day as it comes. If it’s benign, then we sing HALLELUJAH! and he now just has to adjust to life with lifelong medications, but one that was never touched by cancer. If it’s malignant, then he goes through therapy, he beats it, adjusts to life after cancer, and pray he never gets it anywhere else ever again.

As I look out the window of this hospital room, I’m reminded of the view of our old condo. From our bedroom, there were floor to ceiling windows that looked out into Makati City and the Pasig river. It looked so incredible and peaceful at night. I loved knowing that in those twinkling lights were lives upon lives upon lives, all of them either coming or going, blooming or dying. In the darkness of our room, while I nursed my son to sleep, the city and the stars were my night light. I’d look out that window and know that I was absolutely not alone. Somewhere out there would be another mother, just like me, young and feeling a little lost but comforted by the warmth of their young child, sinking into the comfort of sleep.

Now I’m looking out another window, no longer a young mother nursing her child. Not quite as lost, and this time trying to give comfort to a husband who can’t seem to find the right position to sleep. But I look out that window and I see the lights of the city. It’s a different city, but still there they are, twinklings lights and lives upon lives upon lives. Lives coming and going, blooming or dying.

My husband has finally stopped moving around, at last he’s asleep. I hear his soft snores and deep breathing. We’re going home tomorrow, to a life that will look different. Might only be a little different, or it might be a lot, but different nonetheless. We’ll find out soon enough which part of the wave it will be; if we’re in the trough, or cresting the wave, or finally at the end of this swell. I hope we ride this wave well, and while the face of our life may look different after this, may it be a face we love looking at for all of our days. By the grace of God, may those days be many.