I’ve taken the night shift. The house sleeps around me: my husband rests his head in my lap, my mother beside me. The cats look upon me in question of where they can impose.
The bourbon in my cup is now empty.
The rain pours outside. Nature renews herself as life drains and moves within these four walls, as the rivulets cascading through the sidewalk cracks and breaks in the cement.
This is the night, where I listen as a new parent to a monitor for each breath, each noise issuing from a room where something new happens.
The newness is death.
We’ve never known it here. This house has seen birth and weddings. This house has been growing children and transitions… divorce, children becoming adults… but not death… death never asks leave to visit. Much like life and change, death comes unexpectedly.
I have taken the night watch. Not intentionally but by default. Sleep is elusive and slippery, takes hold in tears and disappears in the midst of the night.