The Present Moment
18th October, 2025.
I had just proposed to the woman I loved in the back garden of a hospice. She said yes.
In the minutes that followed, still full of emotion and barely able to process what had just happened, an elderly man walked slowly through the garden with a walking stick. It was part of his daily routine, his quiet midday walk. He too had terminal cancer. I stopped him gently and told him the news.
"I just proposed," I said. "We're getting married."
His face lit up with a smile that I will never forget. "Congratulations," he said warmly. "You two have just made my day."
Not long after, an elderly couple in their seventies came through the garden. The woman was terminally ill, supported by a walking frame, her husband walking closely beside her, guiding her step by step. I shared the news with them too. They smiled broadly, offered their congratulations, and continued their gentle walk.
Those two small encounters have stayed with me ever since.
When I look back on that afternoon, what strikes me most is not just what happened, but what I felt in that garden. Five souls, separated by age and circumstance, yet connected through the very essence of the present moment.
An elderly man moving quietly through the garden with his walking stick, completely present, appreciating the finer details of life that most of us walk past without a second glance.
A twenty three year old man supporting his soon to be wife through terminal ovarian cancer, having been told just one week prior that she had two months left to live.
A twenty one year old woman facing the soul crushing reality that she had only two months remaining, despite having fought with everything she had and hoped with everything in her heart for a different outcome.
An elderly woman in her seventies, making her way through the garden on a walking frame, accompanied by her devoted husband.
And that husband, quietly and lovingly walking beside his wife through her final stretch of life.
Three separate groups of people, all facing mortality in some form, completely present in the same quiet space. Noticing the colours of the flowers. Feeling the breeze. Listening to the birds. No phones, no distractions, no weight of yesterday or worry about tomorrow. Just human beings, fully alive in the moment they were in.
It was on that day, in those moments, that time became completely still. The noise of the outside world carried on as it always does, indifferent and unaware. But in that garden, five souls immersed in the present moment arrived at the same quiet and profound truth.
That life is not found in the past we grieve or the future we chase. It is found here. In the breeze. In the sound of birds. In the eyes of the person beside you. In the quiet miracle of simply being alive in this moment, and nowhere else.
I will never see life the same way again.
