Waiting in Line

There is something hauntingly beautiful about life and death — how closely they exist beside each other, how each breath we take moves us both forward in living and quietly closer to the inevitable end. We don’t talk about it much. Most of us are too busy trying to hold on to what we have: the laughter of loved ones, the routines that bring us comfort, the faces we’ve come to depend on.

But time is cruel. It takes, and it keeps taking.

When those we love are with us, life feels worth it. Even in hardship, there’s a warmth to waking up and knowing someone is still here — someone to talk to, to protect, to cherish. And when they leave… something in us begins to dim. We don’t just lose them. We lose a part of ourselves.

And then — the yearning begins.

Not just for them, but for the chance to see them again.
Sometimes we find ourselves wishing for the end, not out of weakness, but out of love.
We wonder:
Will it be a family reunion, a radiant embrace on the other side of the veil?
Or will it be nothingness, a quiet black stillness as we await something greater — or perhaps, nothing at all?

I don’t know.
None of us truly do.
But I think what breaks us isn’t just fear of death. It’s the slow unraveling — the way we must watch, helpless, as we lose those who shaped our world. And we wait, silently, for our names to be called too.

But there is a kind of strange peace in that.
A line we all stand in.
Not with panic — but with memory, with grief, with the hope that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t the end but a return.

So what do we do until then?

We live.
We love.
We carry their names in our hearts like sacred relics.
We become the people they’d be proud of.
And when the silence creeps in, when the longing overwhelms us, we remind ourselves:
We are still here. For now. And that means something.

Until our name is called — we wait.
Not in fear.
But in quiet understanding.
That life is fragile.
That loss is universal.
And that love, if anything, is the thread that binds both life and death.