The text I received from my former lawyer was nonsensical at first glance. A list of numbers under the words “court dates.” Then, “Charges: Causing Bodily Injury to Partner Or Family Member” followed by, “Strangulation of Partner or Family Member.” Finally, “Endangering Welfare Of Children.”

I noticed odd things, like the Capitalization Of All Letters In The Charges, even ones that should not be capitalized.

Slowly, it dawned on me that the name at the top of the Montana county inmate portal was familiar. It belonged to the drunk driver who had sped into my lane of traffic on a quiet December evening. He hit my westbound car with such impact that I ended up facing east in the Snow King intersection. What I thought was a minor event (I was alive! I was not seriously injured!) ended up sidelining me for the better part of the next year.

My brain wrestled with the facts: Amidst the muddle of the aftermath, I realized the invisible force bonding us to this world is thin. A moment as short as a breath could have ended my life. I wasn’t prepared for the darkness that followed the accident. It came with crushing depression and guilt that I survived, guilt that came in ocean waves every time I heard of another accident and someone who was not as fortunate as I.

“He finally got what he deserves,” my lawyer said. “Aren't you so glad?”

What I actually felt in that moment was unsettled. It appeared that his arrest resulted from violence against his own wife and children. I took no peace in the fact of more victims.

There is no gladness around a growing body count, when there is so much evidence for how much the world already suffers. Bullies and grifters have taken center stage for the humans, as AI agents go rogue and people in charge stand idle, gripped in their fear or greed. We all feel worried about the weight of all the stress and sadness in the world right now, the cancers, the plastics, the wars. About how much different the world will be for our children. To be honest, it's not that great down here right now.

So it's strange, how attached we are to life, even with the mess we make of it. We still don’t want to give up.

My 48-year-old step-niece was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late July, ten years after losing her father to the same disease. Realistic about the significance of a new “use by” date, she adamantly wants to be in her life. She is taking the chemo, reading up on the new treatments, maintaining a profound bravery as she navigates the impossible task of making sense of the incomprehensible. Even after witnessing the suffering of her own father, her impulse is life.

“Stop and smell the roses,” she says. “Like, literally. Stop. Look at the flowers. Smell them.”

There are little deaths that interrupt our lives before we go. The head-on collision. When the kids leave. The college application or the manuscript or the interview that dies with a rejection. The relationship ends or the strong body relents to old age. These are messages preparing us for how one day it will be you, it will be me, getting on intimate terms with a final end.

In this particular moment, though, I feel very much alive. The rain has tricked the trees into thinking it’s spring, and I take in the emerald green, spot a hummingbird perched up high, impossibly still. It may not be that great down here, but it is only here that I am capable of knowing kindness, of taking in the scent of sun on fall ground. Here. Where I want to stay.

Here. Where I Want to Stay.