passing

Last night my Papou (grandfather) passed away. It has been a strange few weeks watching someone deteriorate so quickly. Like watching a letter disintegrate in your hands as you are still trying to read it.

Two images will be in my mind forever. My Yaiya (grandmother) leaning over her husband in the ICU elevator on the way to take him to get a last attempt procedure and in a whisper saying to his ear, "This is going to work." Then as I followed her I watched her try so hard to keep up with his gurney as the nurses pushed him further and further away from her slow steps in the hall.

Over the last couple of weeks, he was unable to speak very much and then not at all, unable to hear because of the damage done to his ears in WWII and with periodic bouts of not being able to recognize us as we cluttered around him. So strange to watch a man who carried himself with the weight of a Colonel to become paper thin and sleeping uncomfortably in a body that is failing. Suddenly not knowing what to do with my hands as I stand there, becomes a faint thought on the peripheral, as he is fading before my eyes.

Before I left the ICU I said my goodbye to him and my Aunt asked me to hold his hand and as I reached up to take it she said just as I thought it, "It's still warm."

Passing quickly and without pain were my initial thoughts as we all had witnessed his discomfort over the last few weeks. I am not afraid of dying anymore, I fear elongated death.

If I am to believe that energy can neither be created or destroyed ... and I do, then to cope with a passing so close, just as my Uncle passed a year ago, I believe it is their life's energy gets passed back down to all of us.

So live life with all the richness you can reach. Do not live for what time the Fates keep.

AG