Years have names, although we usually don’t think of them that way. And this will be the year of my beloved’s ill health.

Something there is in us that feels helpless when the people we love are hurting. And double pneumonia is pretty painful. Sitting here in the hospital, I am grateful fo quiet breathing, for lack of pain. It brings home what Buddhis teaches: it’s all about the breath…

Hence my absence from the blog for a few days. Lots of time to think, but not much for writing. Watching a loved one suffer is – at least for me – a perfect exercise in beginnver’s heart. This year of two knee operations, a shattered ankle, and now double pneumonia has demonstrated over & over that tonglen -the breathing to lessen the pain of others – is often all we can do. And it’s not only HARD, it feels like so very little.

These are true milestones: they mark the curves, the thoroughfares, of our lives. Both the lives of those in physical pain, and those of us who watch. I can’t mend ankles, or heal lungs. I can only breathe, mindfully. With love. And hope. That small ember that lights darkness as we drive. Passing milestones. Breathing…