It is the calm before the storm. The build-up to something bigger and more powerful. When all the monitors beep over one another and the shouts and voices blend into a white noise in the background. It’s when you know that something bad is gonna happen, you just don’t know when. Waiting for the other shoe to drop is the penultimate moment in survival, the difference between life and death. We can never really know for sure how things are going to play out in the moment. All we know is that while the world spins in a circle around us, trying to make sense of the sudden shift in its balance and perspective, we stand in the eye of the hurricane, not sure which way we will spin. Not sure where we will land.

    And then it all stops. The spinning comes to a slow, and the images start to shift into focus. The noise in the background is no longer that overpowering grounding constant. The world seems to be back in its harmony, the pieces falling back into place of the puzzle they were just knocked from. You look around, turning and turning, trying to make sense of where you are. But we don’t know where we are. We don’t know why the noise has stopped or why the world isn’t tilting. But we know that there is something here for us. There is a reason that the world seems balanced, even though everything is all out of place.

    There is a reason we go where we go. That reason isn’t just for time's sake, or for lack of better opportunity. That reason is because there is a driving force pulling us in a direction which we may never know. The reason we are where we are today is because that's where we are meant to be. We are students, teachers, doctors, writers, lawyers, friends, mentors, parents because that is who we are meant to be. We sit at our desks, stand at the chalkboard, stand over an operating table, travel the world, walk on the road because that is where we are meant to be. This is how I know that I am where I am supposed to be. I am supposed to be here, here with a person who hasn’t been in the puzzle for an eternity but has always been a piece of my heart. This puzzle of our lives may seem scrambled and out of place now, but it all makes sense. There is a reason behind everything we are. So there is a reason that I am where I am with my son. My son who was taken from the world before he had a chance to find his reason. My son Samuel, who is where he is for a reason. My son and I are where we are for a reason. We are together again for a reason.
    It may not make sense now. It may not make sense ever, all we know is that our piece of the puzzle is gone from the picture and it’s time to re-do the puzzle, only with one less piece. That piece we can use to make a new puzzle just for ourselves. Maybe that's the reason we are where we are, and we do what we do.