Marveling at Life

Another rainy day found Edna at the window again, dusk settling softly over the city. Below her, cars moved slowly along the slick streets, their headlights smearing into pale ribbons on the wet pavement. The rain fell steadily, patient and quiet.

But Edna wasn’t here.

Her body sat unmoving in the wheelchair, hands folded, eyes fixed on the glass—but her mind had slipped its tether.

She was on a farm.

A small girl again, standing in grass still damp with morning dew, the air crisp and bright with spring. The sky was impossibly blue. She could smell hay and earth and something warm and alive she didn’t yet have words for. A red barn loomed nearby, enormous and comforting, its doors thrown open to the day.

A cow turned its great head toward her, chewing slowly, unbothered by the world. Chickens scratched at the dirt, clucking and fussing, their feathers glossy in the sun. A pig snorted from somewhere behind the fence, making her laugh out loud—pure, unguarded laughter.

She held the fence rail with both hands, marveling at it all.

Life everywhere.
Breathing.
Moving.
Simple and endless.

Her father’s boots crunched behind her. Her mother’s voice floated nearby, light and easy. No urgency. No fear. No awareness of time as something that could run out.

In this place, death had no shape.
No name.
No weight.

It existed only as a distant idea, pushed far beyond the horizon of her small, certain world.

She reached out to touch the coarse hair of a calf, feeling its warmth, its solid presence. The moment felt eternal—unbreakable.

And for just a brief while, the thoughts that haunted her other days—the fading, the losing, the long goodbyes—had no power here. There were no urns. No hospitals. No rain-streaked windows. No Henry slipping away into mist.

Only sunlight.
Only breath.
Only now.

Back in the nursing home room, rain tapped gently at the glass. A car horn sounded faintly below, then disappeared.

Edna’s eyes remained fixed on the window, but her face softened—just slightly—as if some inner warmth had reached her from across the decades.

The farm began to blur. The animals stilled. The blue sky thinned.

But for that brief moment—so small and so merciful—Edna was not dying.

She was simply a little girl again, standing in springtime, marveling at life.