There is never going to be a good time. Deferring a choice is still a choice.

My phone started vibrating at 7:22am on a Sunday morning. It was my mum. Normally, I’m the one who makes the calls because she barely knows how to use her phone. So when she calls, I know she’s made a concerted effort and my reflex is to brace for bad news.

She tells me that my aunt, her sister, has passed away. I spend the morning on the phone with my mum, mostly not saying much, crying with her, for her, for my aunt, for our loss.

I’ve never lost someone close to me. My grandparents on both sides had already passed away before I was born. Most of my extended family live in Ecuador or Indonesia, and I’ve only met a handful of them once or twice. A couple of years ago, an uncle passed away but the sorrow I felt was experienced secondhand through my aunt and cousins.

This time, I feel like death is slowly gathering the people I care most about into a circle, and that circle is getting smaller and smaller.

The last time I saw my aunt in person was when I left Australia 6 years ago. We’d just spent 3 months together. She’d flown from Indonesia to be there for my mum who was about to have knee replacement surgery. During that short period, my aunt and I grew close. I don’t really know how it happened, because she doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak Bahasa Indonesia, but we managed to communicate and spent a lot of our time together in laughter. Some connections are made of more than language.

So when I left, she was in tears. She asked me to visit her in Indonesia the following year, and I told her I would. I had every intention to because it would only be a small stopover on the way to Australia. When it came to booking tickets, I’d push it to the following year because it wasn’t a good time. My mistake was assuming that we’d have time.

Her passing was sudden. My mum had spoken to her on Friday and she seemed to be in good health. By Sunday morning, she’d passed away in her sleep.

This might be the first time I’ve really understood that time is precious and limited, and I ought to live like I believe it. Over the past couple of days, I’ve been thinking about all the other things I’ve been deferring because it wasn’t a good time.

One that’s always present in the back of my mind is the question of where to live. I like our life in Portugal, but I’m also aware that I’m missing precious moments of my nephews’ lives and I know that the coming years may be some of the last I have with my parents. Every year, my partner and I make the 16-hour flight to Chile, and the 22-hour flight to Australia. It’s incredibly impractical.

When I first arrived in Portugal, I’d only expected to stay for a year or 2, but a year turned into 6, and every time we came close to moving back, we’d find reasons why it wasn’t a good time. I’ve always known that I would move back to Australia, so I’ve spent much of the last 6 years feeling torn between arriving and preparing to leave. Neither here nor there.

On the day my mum called, my partner and I decided to apply for an Australian partner visa. We won’t be packing our bags tomorrow, but I’ve accepted that there will never be a good time, and when you defer a choice, circumstances will make the choice for you.

My mum and her sister lived in different countries for most of their lives. They would video call each other every few days, both lying in their respective beds chatting away. She told me about a time when my aunt was eating an Indonesian snack that my mum loved. My aunt told my mum to hold out her hands so she could throw a few of them to her through the phone screen. Then she said, “They’re good, aren’t they? Do you want more?”

The story made me laugh and cry. It was sweet and silly, like something you’d expect of teenage sisters, but it also stung me. It was my aunt’s way of closing the distance between them, of involving my mum in her day-to-day as if she were right beside her. It’s the best you can do when an ocean separates you from the people you care about most.

Coming to terms with mortality has a way of rearranging your priorities. Many of the goals that once seemed important start to look small. I want to end this with a couple of other pieces where death put life into perspective:

• The Accidental Career Break – Sunjay Chopra

• Reinvention After Loss – Kasia Hamilton & I

• Reflections on Death – Dave Kang

• Start Here If You’re New to My Substack – Richard Banfield