in the car outside the hospice

People sit in their cars outside the hospice.

My office is across the street from the hospice. It is also on my walking and jogging route, as well as right by my kid's martial arts studio, so I pass by it a good 5 times per day, anywhere from at 4 in the morning to 7 at night. I am a dependable hospice-car-sitting observer.

Pretty much all the time, someone is in their car outside the facility. I don't see them crying. I mostly just see them sitting. Usually alone.

There's a short film called Ten Meter Tower, whose entire premise is to watch people (67 of them) one by one or sometimes in couples, climb up and try to jump off a 10 meter board into a pool. All ages. There is a universal response to the edge of the board. It acts like a wall and no one was immune to it. The question then becomes, "what does it take to jump?", or alternately, to decide to back down, which it seems about half do.

Walking into or driving away from the hospice is a different kind of Ten Meter Tower. People sit in their cars, a safe interstitial space, in-between, before and after, rearranging their internal architecture to get ready for whatever comes next.

Here's a link to the film: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000004882589/ten-meter-tower.html