After spending nearly every waking minute with Angel for eight straight days, I knew that I had to tell her just one thing. So late at night, just before she fell asleep, I whispered it in her ear. She smiled – the kind of smile that makes me smile back – and she said, "When I'm seventy-five and I think about my life and what it was like to be young, I hope that I can remember this very moment."

 

A few seconds later she closed her eyes and fell asleep. The room was peaceful – almost silent. All I could hear was the soft purr of her breathing. I stayed awake thinking about the time we'd spent together and all the choices in our lives that made this moment possible. And at some point, I realized that it didn't matter what we’d done or where we'd gone. Nor did the future hold any significance.

 

All that mattered was the serenity¹ of the moment.

 

Just being with her and breathing with her.

 

The moral²: We must not allow the clock, the calendar, and external³ pressures to rule our lives and blind us to the fact that each individual moment of our lives is a beautiful mystery and a miracle⁴ – especially those moments we spend in the presence⁵ of a loved one.

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