It is amazing how death brings such clarity to life. Bedside by my mother, the hustle and bustle of the world collapses. There is no urgency here, no insistence, no need now to go from point A to point B. My mother has entered a kind of underground tunnel full of side passages and cave like chambers. The world above goes on—aids and nurses shuffling in and out, the doctor visits, the chaplain checks-in. Susan has her eyes closed. The outer shapes and forms of the world carry no more meaning. To her, spoken words are mostly just muffled sounds. By her side I cradle her head and hold her heart and feel a slight tremor of nerve under her skin. To my touch, I feel the light lub-dub of her pulse, her heart-rate as delicate as a baby sparrow’s. It is the same pulse that brought me into the world from the cavern of her womb sixty years ago. The same pulse that rocked me to sleep as an infant, cradled in her arms. This is the pulse of life she would animate each yoga practice, a discipline she maintained for four decades.
I hold her for hours, tears streaming through me. The very end of life is the greatest teacher, where you have to enter a realm beyond knowing or understanding. I recall the early hours of many mornings, sitting together in meditation in the carpeted room of the den, surrounded by family photos and books.
Mom would say she felt the presence of her angels. In her life she was always in touch with an invisible realm. As a counselor by profession, she was always receptive, intuitive and big-hearted. Now cocooned in silence, her face placid, she drifts into the presence of her angels. Her consciousness lifts from out below the covers, moves across the room and slips out the window, left ajar for the purpose of setting free the spirit that for 92 years has been confined to her body. Like a bird just learning to fly, she flutters and swoops through the living air to become part of the ongoing vastness.
