I did not meet this life until I met its brevity. Did not meet my voice until I knew every word could be my last. Andrea Gibson

No one told me about the way time slows when one of your essential people is dying. How the seconds stretch, sometimes to the point of boredom and sometimes in ways you wish you could capture like lightening in a bottle.

During my father’s last week on earth, my mother, my children and I orbited around him, as we had throughout their marriage and our lives. He was a remarkable man, still sharp until the very end of his life at 102½. Interested in everything and anyone who crossed his path, he could discuss the complexities of the Middle East one moment and list the powers of Pikachu the next.

Because Dad had slipped into a coma before Jimmy, Molly and I could travel to my childhood home from Portland, Oregon, there wasn’t anything we needed to do for him except work with hospice to be sure he was free of pain. The days felt oddly long and spacious with plenty of time for the kids to swim in my parents’ ice-cold pool or sit and draw in the cozy breakfast nook. It may sound strange, but Dad had been so vibrant, so fully present even as the pain from the stenosis in his back overwhelmed him, his overnight descent into the coma and his death five days later were a shock. The letting go wasn’t as hard as coming home to visit and not finding him there.

When Jimmy was initially diagnosed with brain cancer three years later, I refused to entertain the thought that he could die. The odds were in our favor, he sailed through treatment, and I hadn’t yet learned that none of us are entitled to more luck than anyone else (even though it still feels that way sometimes). It was so easy to slide back into our old life after Jimmy finished his year-long treatment, and the clear scans kept coming.

The cancer recurring a year later was the thunderbolt Dan and I couldn’t ignore. We didn’t just start saying yes more often, we searched for ways to spend time together as a family, to do something memorable, to milk every moment we could out of the time we had.

It is impossible to describe the body blow of hearing the words, “There are no more treatments to try” spoken about your 21-year-old son, no matter how gently the neuro-oncologist tries to say them. And yet as poet Andrea Gibson wrote just before her death, happiness really is easier to find once you realize you don’t have forever to find it.

I’ve never had a great memory, especially when it comes to dates and the timing of when things happen. It takes me a moment to calculate how long I’ve been married, how old Molly is, what year we went to Iceland. I regularly can’t recall the names of places, people and passwords. But unlike my dad’s final days, I remember every single one of Jimmy’s. Who was in the house, the order they arrived and departed, the talks we had, how quickly the people who loved him dropped everything to come. I learned how much grace and beauty you can pack into a short conversation. The way every moment becomes precious when you don’t know how many more you’re going to get. The memory of my head on Jimmy’s chest and the weight of his arm around my shoulder remains more than twelve years after his death.

When everything falls away but being fully present for one of the people you love most, time sharpens and slows. Every moment registers, imprinting itself in your memory. Even now, when I think of those two weeks, I remember how rich and full each day felt. The way everything mattered, how I would have given anything for more.