One year ago, I was somewhere in the middle of Spain, on a trek between the Pyrenees and Santiago. And now, I’m living in a cabin right outside the Tetons, walking distance to a little mountain town hospital I’ve grown to love so deeply. Life is wild, and unexpected, and hurtful, and honestly, sometimes the most disappointing. But it’s also the most magical.

Yesterday, I took care of both a 97 year old and an 18 day old. The very beginning all the way to the very end. A life completely lived and a life full of its potential. Looking into eyes that can’t yet comprehend the world around them, to eyes that have fallen upon 97 years of this world’s magic and disappointments. I remember thinking to myself, in the middle of an unusually busy day, that this is probably one of those isolated experiences. One I will more than likely, never have again. So I took a moment yesterday to just pause. To let the incredible gravity of this circumstance take hold, soak into my soul. And I felt so awed by the everyday magnificence in being a human, of aging, of childhood all the way into adulthood and all the way back to the creation of life. The cycle of it all. The thousands of little choices we get to make that lead us to the places and the people, the experiences and the heartache that shape who we are.

The 18 day old peanut has everything ahead of her; the heartache, the joy, the disappointments, and the magic; while the 97 year old had seen all he was bound to see, yet still held your gaze as though equally satisfied, yet desperate for more. Truly, the only thing I could gather a grasp on in such timeless moments with these two patients was that I was so grateful to have their eyes fall upon me. The new and the old.