The World Doesn't Stop

The terminally ill describe the moment after learning of the diagnosis, the insistent feeling that the world should stop. 

But the traffic keeps to its same patterns. The regular sound of engines being shifted to higher speed when the light changes. The regular sound of trucks and buses braking.

The clouds float along at an even pace. Sometimes puffy cumulus clouds in a blue sky. Sometimes overcast; a plain gray sky.

The news carries the same stories as thirty years before, this time with different particular actors. Similar patterns playing out. Similar events.

There's an indifferent inhospitable sameness about everything, life's inertia of convention and everyday, a yawning gulf of lonely coldness no one except those facing impending death can imagine.

For the terminally ill around whom the world doesn't stop, I pray to Vesta.