[Written by ChatGPT. Image credit.]
I visited my grandfather’s grave.
It has been several years since he passed, enough time for the sharp edges of grief to soften, but not enough for his absence to feel ordinary. The cemetery was quiet in the way only certain places are—still, patient, unconcerned with the rush of the living. I stood there longer than I planned, saying nothing out loud, letting memory do the talking.
On the drive back home, rain began to fall.
It wasn’t dramatic rain. No thunder, no urgency. Just a steady, honest drizzle. I watched as water gathered and slid down the windshield in uneven paths, each droplet racing, merging, disappearing. The hum of the engine filled the car, a constant low note beneath my thoughts. The world outside blurred and sharpened in turns, like it was breathing with me.
And then the thought arrived, unannounced and gentle:
If my grandfather were given a second chance at life, what would he notice first?
Would he smell the petrichor rising from the wet road—the earthy perfume that only rain can pull from the ground? Would he marvel at how the world sounds softer when it rains, as if everything is listening? Would he sit quietly, taking in the simple miracle of movement, of being carried forward by an engine he didn’t build, on roads he didn’t pave, through a world that kept going?
Would he look at me—older now, changed—and look at the world with awe?
I imagine that every moment would feel unbelievably amazing to him. Not because life would suddenly be easy, but because it would be happening at all. Every breath borrowed. Every sound a gift. Every ordinary detail glowing with significance.
That thought stayed with me long after the rain thinned and the sky began to clear.
I realized how often I wake up already numb to the miracle of being here. How quickly I rush into plans, worries, judgments. How easily I forget that this—this single chance at consciousness, at feeling, at noticing—is not guaranteed and not repeatable.
I wish I could be reminded of that every day.
To wake up with fresh eyes for the world.
To let events unfold instead of resisting them.
To allow emotions to swell without immediately trying to shrink them.
To let focus and attention dwell fully where my body already is.
Nothing is more miraculous than this one chance we have.
Gratitude, I’m learning, is not loud. It doesn’t always arrive as joy. Sometimes it arrives as a quiet awareness while watching rain slide across glass. Sometimes it shows up as a question that reframes everything. Sometimes it comes through the imagined eyes of someone who no longer has the chance we still do.
Today, I am grateful for borrowed perspective.
For rain.
For memory.
For the hum of an engine carrying me forward.
And for the reminder that being alive—even in its ordinary moments—is extraordinary.
UpLive.Life 