One of my favorite lines from a Green Day song is, “I hope you had the time of your life” I heard it again recently, but it landed differently than it used to. Not as nostalgia. Not as a goodbye. But as a question, If this was all there ever was, and all that will ever be... Did we do it right? Did we live it well? Did we let ourselves have the best time we could? I used to think my legacy needed to sound impressive. That it had to prove I mattered. And maybe it still does, a

I am often asked what called me to this work, what brought me here. The truth is, I don’t really have a clean answer. This was never a goal. Never a plan. I didn’t set out to work in end-of-life care. I landed here while caring for a friend who was dying, at a time when I felt lost in ways I didn’t yet have language for. It was unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and far outside anything I imagined for myself. And maybe that was the best part, it challenged me in a way I felt compelle

When I look at this vase, I notice the petals on the table first. They are impossible to ignore. They feel like evidence, of time passing, of change, of what’s already behind us. As we age, this is often where our eyes go. To what we no longer have. To the energy that’s different now. To the version of ourselves we remember fondly, and sometimes mourn a little. The fallen petals can start to feel like a loss of beauty, a loss of possibility. Like proof that we are somehow les

Optimism often arrives at the bedside holding hands with hope. They are spoken together, breathed out softly, sometimes clung to. And almost always, they are misunderstood. There is a quiet judgment that can surface in these rooms. “ They are in denial. They don’t want to accept reality. They are pretending this isn’t happening.” I hear it said about families who continue to hope, who allow optimism to live beside the truth that their loved one is dying. I don’t see denial.