When Time Narrows Down to a Breath

Imagine. It is midnight. You are alone in a room with a person that you love. A person that is dying. Only a candle flickers stubbornly through the darkness. The only sounds you hear are the steady hum of the fan in the bathroom next door and a heavy breathing. A breathing that shutters through every inch of flesh. Letting a snorring escape through purred lips that leaves no doubt that the body is still very much alive. Outside, the world continues as if nothing is happening. Someone is walking by. Laughing. Someone is making dinner. Someone is worrying about tomorrow. But here, in this room, time has narrowed down to a breath.

What do you think? How do you feel? Maybe you have certain ideas. You could be thinking: How am I supposed to know what the right thing is? You could be curious. You could be thinking about your own death. You could wonder how this feels. What happens inside you when you realise there is nothing left to fix? You could feel uncomfortable. Or sad. Or afraid. You could think: I don’t want to be here. You could wonder what happened, how it came to this, whether this is how it is supposed to be. You could feel helpless. You could want to do something. Anything. Make the breathing stop. Make the breathing continue. You could become silent. Your innermost self could simply become peaceful. For a moment, there is nothing to solve, nothing to understand, nothing to decide. Just the strange quietness of being fully present. Or maybe all you could think is:

What the actual fuck?

I don’t know how it would be for you. But I can tell you how it is for me. Right now.

It makes me think of my grandma. Of me making jokes that her snoring could wake the dead. Which, sitting here now, feels like a rather unfortunate choice of words. I think of her ever-so-predictable response: “I don’t snore.” And then the laughter of my grandpa and me. Who was, by the way, not one dime better than my grandma.

It is one of my most treasured memories. Of two of my favorite people in the world. I think they would haved loved this person over here. And she would have loved them.

So the only thing I feel right now, is love.

It is, in fact, what I have felt as a steady undercurrent throughout the last nine days. Love in the most ordinary things. In laughing about the word paraplu, because, come on, it is just funny. In going to the beach one more time to collect shells together. In tending to the flowers in her garden. In the way I reached out and touched without even thinking about it. In wanting to make her comfortable. In remembering things she once said. In knowing exactly which little things might make her smile.

Love in the strange tenderness of being allowed so close to another human being in such a deeply vulnerable moment. Love in the silence. In sitting there without needing to say anything. In sharing a room without having to fill it with words. In a hand resting on an arm. In a kiss on the forehead. In a boop on the nose. In the small, almost invisible gestures that would normally pass unnoticed, but somehow become very clear when you slow down enough to see them.

This really has surprised me. I expected death to make everything feel heavy. That is the only death I know. And it does, sometimes. Of course it does. But it has also made everything incredibly still. And precise. Things that would usually be nothing more than the background of a normal day suddenly become the day itself.

There is so much love in the ordinary.

You just have to be quiet enough to notice it.