Yes, I think my grandmother would say, yes. You are a bit at loose ends.

Have you been there? Do you know? It’s what happens when the world turns in such a way that you can’t get your footing, find your breath, steady your gait. You know there are a thousand things that could be done but none of them feel quite right—not even doing nothing (which I happen to think is a very fine thing to do once in a while).

And so I find myself here in this house that is both mine and also not, familiar and foreign all at once. It is so quiet I hear the clock tick tock, tick tock.

(One would think this stillness a blessing.)

And yet.

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I got up early this morning—washed the towels, emptied the refrigerator, wiped down the shower and the sink and the bathroom floor—preparing to leave; ready-making for the long drive home. There were a hundred little decisions in support of Make it there before dark. And then I stopped to say goodbye. To hug her neck and kiss her cheek and tell her, one more time, I love you more. I will be back in a couple of weeks, I planned to say.

But she reached for my hand and closed her eyes, and as she fell into another sleep, she didn’t let go.

Neither did I. I knew without thinking it was one of those times, one of those more-rare-than-you-think “life” times in which you are to submit, to be led, to stop planning and sorting and managing and simply Let It Be. And so I did.

Which has brought me here tonight, back to this house, alone, quiet, grocery-less, completely Off Plan and not sure what to do next. Television? Ridiculous. That fantastic book or that stack of magazine I’ve toted 300 miles—no. Instead I sit, restless, feeling in my bones I am off kilter because the universe is trying to right itself, as surprised by this late week change of plans as I am.

And I pray for my Mother, there in that skilled nursing bed, a woman who most certainly did not see any of this coming. I pray this night finds her sleeping peacefully, wrapped in our love, lost amid dreams of brighter days.