I’m resting today. Yes, I’m writing too, but that’s resting to me.

Life goes so fast. So fast. There’s a great line from a Dan Fogelberg song (yep, that’s how old I am) that captures this sentiment: “Rushing headlong through the crashing of the days, we run on and on without a backwards glance.” The title of the song is more ominous: In the Passage. Meaning, in the passage from the cradle to the grave.

I visit my grandmother now. She’s in bed, in a nursing home, where she has been for a few years now. It’s been over two years since she’s been out of bed at all. She is still in the passage. Where is she in the process? I don’t know, and it’s somewhat morbid to ponder. It is also calming, however, to think that she lived a life rushing headlong, loving others, taking care of others (lots of us, some who have gone ahead without her). Now she rests, I hope. It’s hard to know. She isn’t verbal anymore, and she sleeps a great deal of the time. I can’t answer why she is still with us, a full life having been lived, and yet full rest not quite hers. I just don’t know.

I only know that rest is not only for the end of life. “I can rest when I’m retired.” No, I need rest before then, especially because retirement isn’t a goal of mine. Yes, I probably will retire from my job, but retire from life? No. My grandmother didn’t, and I won’t either.

So that means I need rest now. I just completed a week of exhilarating and exhausting training out of state. I’m home, and the tree in my front yard has lovely bordeaux colored leaves on it. And so I rest.

Rushing headlong will resume on Monday.