The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After

by Julie Yip-Williams

Live while you’re living, friends. From the beginning of the miracle, to the unwinding of the miracle.

You will understand that nothing lasts forever, not pain, or joy. You will understand that joy cannot exist without sadness. Relief cannot exist without pain. Compassion cannot exist without cruelty. Courage cannot exist without fear. Hope cannot exist without despair. Wisdom cannot exist without suffering. Gratitude cannot exist without deprivation. Paradoxes abound in this life. Living is an exercise in navigating within them. I

Mr. G

But in the meantime, live, my darling babies. Live a life worth living. Live thoroughly and completely, thoughtfully, gratefully, courageously, and wisely. Live!

Anyone who raises young children understands the oftentimes soul-crushing monotony of life’s routines, of battling through fatigue to get up every morning, of rushing the kids off to school, of withstanding the stresses of the oh-so-necessary paying job, of cooking healthy dinners that will likely go uneaten by picky children, of relentlessly negotiating with the kids over when to brush teeth and what clothes to wear the next day and what treats they can have if they eat tomorrow’s lunch.

They say that youth is wasted on the young. Now, as I approach my final days, I realize that health is wasted on the healthy, and life is wasted on the living. I never understood that until now, as I prepare in earnest to leave this life.

Time’s amnesiac power is necessary and healthy, for it encourages life and living, allowing room for new experiences and new emotions, which come with engaging in the present and being vested in the future, and places our memories where they should be—in the past, to be accessed when we need and want them. And perhaps most important and relevant to you, time allows for the gaping wounds of the past to close so that we can move forward, so that even the most painful experiences can be remembered with some objectivity, from which we can learn and grow.