To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. Ecclesiastes 3:1
I hold her tonight as she cries.
She's almost as tall as I am, but her thin frame allows my arms to reach around and hold her as tight as when she was much younger.
Her head is buried deep within my heart and I stoke her back as she shakes sadness.
I cup her face and tell her it will be alright.
Maybe it will even be better.
Maybe there will be even more time.
They will try to make more time now, I assure her. For they will miss you, too.
Her pain wets my hands as I kiss her and promise again that it will be alright.
All this joy and anticipation around us has made us careless, forgetful of feelings of one so young.
I tell her love does not end.
And remember, I say with a smile - it's just seven minutes.
She doesn't smile, she doesn't laugh.
How do I promise and explain something I can't understand myself? How the sands of time pass when we are not looking.
Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
~Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life, 1859
