Isthmus, Jan 2026

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Life Goes On

 

Our 6-year-old hen has started crowing daily at 6 a.m. The sound is more like a croak than a crow. Even so, it sounds to me like a kind of joy: It’s a good day to be alive!

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Having just flown back from Sweden, my body thinks it’s afternoon. I get up and make coffee. Outside the kitchen window, honey bees and goldfinches are at work in the lavender hyssop. The hens in their run scratch and flap their wings. 

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It’s a good day to be alive. These are the words with which my father’s daily calls to me often began. When my dad still was able to go for walks in his neighborhood, he’d brake his walker every block or two, sit down on the built-in seat and look around. With his laboring heart, cancer-eaten bones, and an expression of love on his gaunt face, he would soak up every detail, name every bird (he was a veteran birder), and offer a positive comment to anyone passing by. For my dad, quality of life with terminal illness meant getting up in the morning (even after mind-racing nights of little or no sleep) and feeling that it was a good day to be alive. 

My father taught me that the only person who can measure the quality of a life is the person living it. . . .

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for the full essay, please go to Isthmus, Jan 2026