In-Between Ones

Read about the inspiration behind #brownpaperwords.

"Death is the great equalizer. It is no respecter of persons. It comes to everyone." - unknown

It is a Saturday and my dearest friend is in the hospital bed next to her father who is 62 years older than her. It's a-most-unlikely, yet a-most-beautiful age gap. She is mutually the youngest of his ten children, and perhaps the most like him. A father and daughter a generation apart, yet somehow more bonded than any other pair I've witnessed. 

She's in his big shirt and he's in her big heart.

Cancer is upon him but so is some kind of peace I have never known. He cracks jokes in his Tennessee accent—overtones of tired cheer in his voice. She's heard the joke before but the familiarity is no thief of her laughter. Her laugh simultaneously belongs to her while belonging to her younger self. She looks up, and then looks left—remembering—as nostalgia wells up in her hazel eyes. Eyes colored green with golden flecks of memories.

 As the Florida twilight enters outside the hospital window, I capture the moment on her Canon AE-1. 

I look away, the moment too sacred for anothers eyes and I grab my brown-paged journal and pen the words that are falling graceful like rain in this white, sterile room:

We are all birthed with a breath & leave without one. It is the in-between ones that can change everything.