Tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone

How many times had that rolled across my lips?

A trite cliché with just enough philosophical import

to prove my intellectual depth

It’s the companion to “don’t take anything for granted “

Which of course I did

Which of course, everyone does

But as with all things, perspective is everything

And mine has been blasted into atoms

A lifetimes’ assumptions wiped away in an instant

Tomorrow isn’t promised takes on a whole new meaning

when the permanence of an unending string of days

is shown to be an illusion.

I’m now left with a void to fill

A void from which all my certainty had been extracted

A place that once was filled with religious dogma

Now filled simply with the unknown.

How am I supposed to carry on?

Certain now in the knowledge that life could,

without the slightest warning, end in any moment

and how without the intervention of providence

would have ended on that fateful Mother’s Day.

If I had crashed my car on the way to the hospital

I would have died

If I had gone home to lay down when I didn’t feel well

I would have died,

sobering realizations each.

Without a hint of how to cope with them.

I’m left to wonder if there was a reason

Things played out as they did.

Is there any hope I will ever understand?