There is a curve in the road I drive often.
The kind that disappears just long enough to make you wonder what waits beyond it. Trees lean in as though they have been whispering to one another for centuries. The hills rise and fall with the quiet confidence of something ancient. In the summer, the air becomes heavy with the promise of rain. The sky glows gold where the sun still holds on, while darker clouds gather just beyond the horizon.
One afternoon, my windows were down.
The wind rushed through the car with enough force to lift my hair from my shoulders and wrap itself around me like invisible hands. The air smelled of warm earth and distant storms. Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road drifted through the speakers, filling every empty space with something that felt larger than music.
As I rounded that familiar curve, a thought arrived without invitation.
Maybe this is what dying feels like.
It wasn’t fear nor panic… not even darkness.
Just this.
Movement.
Wind.
Music.
The certainty that you are headed somewhere you cannot yet see.
The thought startled me, not because it frightened me, but because it carried an unexpected peace. As I rolled around that curve, Elton blarred “Ahh, ah, ahhhh” It stayed with me long after the song ended. I have returned to it many times since, turning it over in my hands like a stone found along a riverbank, wondering what it was trying to teach me.
Perhaps death has always frightened us because we insist on imagining it as a wall.
Maybe it is a bend in the road instead.
We spend our lives believing we must know what comes next before we are willing to move forward. We crave maps. We ask for certainty. We build philosophies, religions, and stories because uncertainty is one of the heaviest things a human heart can carry.
Yet every meaningful moment of our lives has required us to step into what we could not see.
We fell in love without guarantees.
We became parents without instructions.
We buried people we never imagined living without.
We changed careers, moved cities, ended relationships, forgave impossible things, and woke up one morning realizing we were no longer the person we had been.
Every transformation demanded that we disappear around a curve before we understood where it led.
Perhaps we have been practicing for mystery our entire lives.
There is something almost sacred about roads.
They ask nothing from us except trust.
You do not see every mile when you leave your driveway. You see only the stretch illuminated before you. The next curve remains hidden until you arrive there.
Life has always worked this way.
The strange part is that we rarely notice it.
We imagine certainty because our calendars are full and our routines are predictable. We mistake familiarity for permanence. We convince ourselves that tomorrow has already signed a contract with us.
Then something happens.
A phone call.
A diagnosis.
A goodbye.
A funeral.
A birth.
One moment changes everything.
Suddenly the road bends, and we remember that we have never truly known what waited beyond the next turn.
Perhaps that is why beauty often feels so unbearably close to grief.
The same sunset that makes us stop and stare also reminds us it cannot last.
The laughter of a child echoes because one day that child will grow older.
The warmth of someone’s hand lingers because one day it will no longer be there.
Impermanence sharpens love.
Nothing teaches us how precious a moment is quite like the knowledge that it cannot be held forever.
Maybe that is why the wind felt different that afternoon.
It was impossible to possess.
It could only be experienced.
You cannot keep the wind.
You cannot fold it into your pocket.
You cannot ask it to stay exactly as it is.
You simply allow it to touch your skin before it continues on its journey.
Perhaps every beautiful thing in our lives has always been like that.
A conversation.
A kiss.
A season.
A parent.
A child.
A dog sleeping at your feet.
The smell of rain before it falls.
The song that somehow finds you at exactly the moment you needed it.
None of these belong to us.
They visit.
Then they continue onward.
I wonder if suffering begins the moment we mistake a visitor for a possession.
There is another reason that moment on the road has stayed with me.
The storm.
It was coming.
I could see it gathering in the distance, rolling quietly toward me with all the inevitability of nature itself. Yet where I was driving, the sunlight still poured across the pavement. Gold and shadow occupied the same sky.
How often does life look exactly like that?
Joy beside sorrow.
Hope beside heartbreak.
Healing beside grief.
Birth beside endings.
We keep waiting for life to separate itself into neat categories. We imagine that one day the storms will finally pass and the sky will remain permanently blue… but perhaps wisdom is recognizing that sunlight and thunderstorms have always shared the same horizon.
Maybe peace is not found in avoiding storms. Maybe it is found in rolling the windows down anyway.
There is something profoundly human about trying to outrun endings.
We distract ourselves with noise.
We collect possessions.
We chase accomplishments.
We measure success in numbers that will one day belong to someone else.
As though building taller towers could somehow negotiate with time. Yet every cemetery quietly reminds us that time has never accepted bargains.
The remarkable thing is not that we die. The remarkable thing is that we were ever here at all.
Against impossible odds, consciousness opened its eyes through us. For a little while, the universe became capable of watching sunsets through human eyes.
It became capable of laughing.
Of crying.
Of falling hopelessly in love.
Of writing poems.
Of planting gardens.
Of listening to Elton John while driving around a curve in the mountains with the windows down before a summer storm.
That is astonishing.
Sometimes I think we become so consumed with surviving that we forget to notice the miracle of simply existing.
The wind does not question whether it is worthy of blowing.
The trees do not apologize for taking up space.
The rain never wonders if it has earned the right to fall.
Only humans spend years asking permission to become what they already are.
Maybe the greatest tragedy is not that life ends.
Maybe it is that so many people reach the end having never fully arrived inside it.
Always postponing joy.
Always waiting until they lose ten pounds.
Until they have more money.
Until the children grow up.
Until retirement.
Until someone finally loves them enough to convince them they were worthy all along.
Life keeps whispering, Now.
We keep answering, Later.
One day there are no more laters.
I do not know what happens after we die.
I have my beliefs.
I have my hopes.
I have mysteries that sit quietly inside me like old friends whose names I have forgotten, but certainty has become less interesting to me than wonder.
Wonder keeps the heart open. Wonder allows mystery to breathe. Wonder does not demand answers before it permits beauty.
Perhaps faith has less to do with knowing and more to do with trusting the road beneath your tires.
There is something else I realized after that drive. Maybe the reason the thought did not frighten me is because it was never really about death.
It was about surrender. Not giving up. Not quitting. Simply releasing the illusion that I have ever been in complete control.
Every breath arrives without my permission.
Every heartbeat continues while I sleep.
The earth spins whether I worry or not.
The stars rise without consulting my plans.
There is immense freedom in admitting that life has always been carrying me far more than I have been carrying it.
Maybe dying, whenever it comes, is not falling into darkness. Maybe it is finally unclenching our fists. Maybe it is discovering that what we feared was an ending was only another curve in a road too large for us to see all at once.
Until then, I want to keep rolling the windows down.
I want to notice the wind.
I want to sing when the music arrives.
I want to memorize the scent of rain before it falls.
I want to tell people I love them before silence has the chance to speak for me.
I want to stand beneath impossible skies and remember that this ordinary afternoon is something my ancestors could never have imagined and my descendants will never experience exactly as I do now.
This moment has never existed before.
It never will again.
I guess that is what makes it holy.
If there comes a day when I reach my final curve, I hope it finds me the same way that afternoon did.
Moving forward.
Heart open.
Windows down.
The storm somewhere behind and somewhere ahead.
The wind reminding me that I was never separate from the world that carried me.
The music rising just enough to drown out fear, and instead of asking what waits around the bend, I hope I remember to smile.
After all, every beautiful thing that has ever happened in my life was waiting around a curve I could not yet see.
With Absolute Love, Kazerai Quinn AkA Mother of Mourning
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