All the Time We Thought We Had

We spend our lives building toward someday.
Someday, when things are easier.
Someday, when there’s more time.
Someday, when we can finally rest, travel, laugh, breathe.

But for some, someday doesn’t come.

My sister is thirty-nine. She’s in a hospital two thousand miles away, and the hug I gave her before I left may be the last one I ever give. I’m still praying for a miracle; I haven’t stopped, but this time, I held her a little longer, just in case.

My siblings and I were separated by circumstances, not choice. Life fractured us early, and when we finally began to rebuild, time already had a head start. It’s strange how family can carry both ache and affection in the same breath. You love each other fiercely, but the weight of the years between you always lingers.

And yet, somehow, even here, in the harsh hum of ICU machines and the sterile quiet of hospital corridors, there was laughter. Real laughter. The kind that shakes loose the heaviness, if only for a minute.

We threw her a wedding in that ICU. Her hair wasn’t perfect, she was shaky and tired, but her eyes, those eyes, were alive with hope. We bought her a dress off the rack, played the music from someone’s phone, and made promises that love would outlast it all. We cried and we laughed. For one sacred moment, grief made room for celebration.

Later, between hospital transfers, we stole a moment at the beach. She sat wrapped in a blanket, the salt air brushing her face, and her boys on either side. We dipped our feet in the hot tub that wasn’t ours, laughed like kids sneaking past curfew, and forgot, for just a heartbeat, how fragile everything was.

That’s what I keep thinking about, how joy and sorrow can exist in the same breath, how life insists on showing up, even when it hurts, how laughter can still echo through the pain.

I’ve spent so much of my life building for the future, saving, planning, chasing milestones. But watching my sister fight for another day has taught me something I can’t shake off:
You can’t buy back time.
You can’t plan your way to peace.
You can’t keep waiting for someday.

All we really have is now.

So hold the hug a little longer. Say the words. Take the picture. Make the memory. Because one day, those ordinary moments, the messy, imperfect, miraculous ones, will be the most sacred things you’ve ever had.

And maybe, that’s what life was always trying to teach us: that the point was never to build the perfect future, but to be fully alive in the moments we still have left.