“Lets go! Lets go!!” I yelled from the back of the ambulance. I was scared and at a loss for what to do next. A yound girl was crying frantically for her little baby boy in my hands. And he wasn’t breathing. And I wasn’t breathing either. She had fainted while bathing him, letting him slip beneath the water and woke to find it drowned. God knows we did all we could but the odds were just stacked against us. At least that’s what I was told. But I felt differently. Maybe it was this, maybe it was accumulation of events. Thinking back, there is no one particular job that really made the difference. I think it was more the fact that after seeing 8 years of death, sadness, and sickness it just gathered, like a leaking tap, filling my emotional reservoir until it couldn’t take any more in. I was dying on the inside getting less and less sleep until the days folded one into the other.

Fast forward 15 months later and here I am. I took a deep breathe and took in the scent of rain on the wind. The tall summer grass danced at my feet and rarely have I felt so alive. I looked to my left and saw Hunter and Brittney holding hands. He pulled her close and kissed her forehead. Hunter dug his hand deep into his pocket and grasped the tiny little box hidden there until his knuckles turned white.  My soul smiled. I knew something that she didn’t. That he loves her more than he could ever express in words. That he wants her something fierce. That somewhere between now and sunset he will ask her to be his wife. And I will be a witness.

I try not to think of the ways my life has changed these last two years. If I do I will cry. These two hands that once held a tiny life and had the agony of feeling that life slip through my clinched fingers now holds a new kind of life. The contrast between my life then and my life today is more than can be expressed or comprehended. Further from the east to the west. And I am thankful to be here. And I am happy to be happy again. 

I took one last deep breath and gathered my thoughts. And I smiled. “You two love birds ready?” I asked as played one final note on my beloved piano, my friend. My heart fluttered in my chest because deep down I knew this was going to be a good one.

She said yes…