Between Life and Death Is Your in-Between Moments and Learn to Recognize Them Before It’s Too Late

This happened to me after the death of my mother

When my Mom died, I never thought she saved the best for last. The lessons she left days before and after she died are what will define me as a person and as a soul for the rest of my life.

Days leading to her death and death would come to her after she decided to stop her dialysis treatments. A decision that I respected and supported despite knowing that losing her was a forgone conclusion.

It was a beautiful experience, as she prepared us, her family, to see that while Life is beautiful, Death is as beautiful.

My Mom in-between moments as she was dying.

There is too much to share in those last three weeks leading to her death. Her in-between moments are all about love.

She loved my father as she was dying.

Every time my father would visit, her eyes light up. She knew she was dying. Her body is telling her that. But her heart will not miss the opportunity to show how much she loved the man she never stopped loving, even if they separated forty years ago. My father was her in-between.

As soon as my father arrives, she would ask me to lift her from her bed. When Dad tells her to eat, even if she can’t, or her body doesn’t want to, she does.

She hardly sleeps. Her body is in pain throughout the night. As we wait for the sun to rise, it means another day with her.

And as soon as she feels better, she looks forward to her another in-between moment with MatMat, her great-grandchild. She gleefully awaits for MatMat to arrive each morning.

Whatever strength she can muster, she would give him all her time, and a smile would always be on her face as MatMat plants a kiss on her cheek and tells her, “I love you, Nanay!(Grandma!)”

On the day we buried her, I know what she left me is more than her memories. It is to ingrain on my mind to enjoy Life’s in-between moments.

And between Life and death, there can only be one in-between, and that is living your Life.

Finding my in-between

While I didn’t lose a loved one in 2020, a year when it is hard to fathom grief when there is already too much to process. The year when the world experienced a pandemic.

I still lost my Mom when the world is still struggling with the pandemic, and the world we live in now has changed forever.

There is no perfect time to lose someone you love, grief follows, and it stays there. It never really goes away.

What is important is to live my in-between until my time is up and be reunited with my Mom.

Finding Life’s Between, In Between, and in-between moments are the lessons I learned from my Mom’s death.

1. It’s time to focus on what you can now do right now to prepare for the next chapter of your life. The in-between Life is a space you go to when you leave one chapter of your Life and before starting another.
2. It’s the place where you’re not so sure what comes next but are excited about where it might lead. It’s a time to live.
3. The next chapter of your life is only a chapter of your life away, and if you’re working on yourself, it’s time you take your time to accomplish all the necessary work to prepare yourself for the next chapter of your life properly.
4. Once the next chapter of your life is determined, it’s time to choose a new intention.
5. An intention isn’t a date you have to figure out — it’s the direction you want to go in Life (incorporating what brings you joy and meaning and purpose and meaning.) An intention is a game-changer.
6. As you continue on your journey, you will continue to experience challenges, difficulties, and difficulties of many kinds.
7. This will not stop you from overcoming the challenges that come your way. It’s inevitable. You have to keep moving forward. You deserve to keep going.
8. As tough as life can be right now, take comfort in knowing that you are not alone.
9. Everyone is going through something at some point in their Life — Whether it’s dealing with a difficult breakup, a demanding boss, dealing with losing someone you care about, a stressful sports event, or even dealing with severe, long-term illness.
10. It’s okay to talk to someone about how your feelings — that’s what family and friends are for.

You can develop yourself into someone who creates a better world for others around you — by becoming a happier, healthier, and more joyful you.

Conversations with friends about finding their in-between moments

After my Mom died, in between my grief. I found the time to share the lessons I learned from Mom with my friends.

We live in a world full of uncertainty. Life is too short. Life is never meant to be easy, that I know now for sure.

But Life offers us the opportunity time to breathe, to live, and to laugh. Let us not waste them, as, at any time, the wind can shift quickly, and when it does, we miss the moments that are meant for us to enjoy, our in-betweens.

There is very little space and time that separates what happens now and tomorrow. You can say that is the “between” moments.

Sometimes, in Life, we feel nothing is ‘in-between”, that Life takes everything from us, we get tired of living, and all we see is the big void in our lives.

But, if we look closely, even at the lowest or darkest times of our lives, there is what I call our in-between moments.

The moments we sometimes fail to recognize those moments are gifts borne out of the intelligent design by God or by the Universe, for us to see that everything in life is fleeting, that nothing stays forever, except love, and in some ways grief.

What if I told you that the unknown and the uncertainty aren’t what’s waiting for you? It’s okay to fear what’s ahead. It’s just something you have to do.

But don’t let the fear overwhelm you. Most of the time, the things we fear or worry about, none of them really mattered or really materialized.

We make it through the difficult times. We’re strong, we’re together, and we keep each other moving forward.

We don’t want to let everyone down. We want a solution, a plan of how we’re going to get through life so that our family and our loved ones don’t have to suffer with us.

But not everything we plan for ourselves or for our loved ones happens, and whatever happens, they happen for a reason.

While we can empower others instead of being helpless and alone.

Accept the unknown

We all know there’s so much more out there. Accept the fact that you’re not in control of everything.

Finding self-worth and being happy with your Life doesn’t mean hiding, or not going to places, or doing things that will help us get to where we feel we need to go.

Well, you can’t avoid facing hard times. We all have to face some of this in our Life. It’s just part of it. We leave something out, or we don’t talk about something, or we worry or defend or justify something, or sometimes we choose the easy way out.

Stay curious

Continue asking Life questions, whatever they may be at this point in your life. I still have a few which I want to share with you.

My Life’s Three Questions are:

1. What will be the center of my Life?
2. What will be the character of my Life?
3. What will be the contribution of my Life?

The hard question to ask ourselves is how to find our true selves?

Final Thoughts

No matter how hard it is for now, my Mom’s death came exactly the right time. Mom wants me to live the next chapter of my life. Sadly my next chapter means a life without her.

I feel I need to share my story with you because I can muster the courage to share my life so that others may learn a lesson from it.

The Universe has other plans; it never stops, and by its intelligent design, whatever happens in our lives, we may not understand the reasons, but it will make perfect sense in the end.

My Mom’s death means I have to live and find my in-between, which to her means to continue living my life the best that I can.

Because in her dying moments, she still found her in-between moments, and she loved till her very end.