All There Is To Do

This piece is about my attempt to comes to terms with my mother's illness, Alzheimer's Disease, but has often been of great comfort to people coming to terms with other things including death, offering comfort and the realisation that alongside the pain, it also offers us a gift in the form of an opportunity for reappraising our priorities in life.

All There Is To Do

As her illness prevents much further participation in life, I realise my mother has done all she came here to do; nothing more; nothing less. For me, the expectation of this or that fulfilment leaves me empty, looking for what shouldn’t be and ignoring all that is and was; failing to acknowledge the contribution she has been to me and so many others.

Seeing that all there is to do in life is what we do in life and that there is peace without expectation gives us the freedom to get on with life with a sense of urgency and not to take for granted that there’ll be another tomorrow.

There will always be things that we do not have time to do and we can either fight it or accept it. Then all there is to do is to be unreasonable and not put off till tomorrow what we can do today: how exciting and dynamic: even if tomorrow doesn’t come, we know we savoured every moment of life and squeezed every last drop there was to get. And then there is peace.