Hatti Figge, LYT, LMSW, Foundations Student, On Letting Go
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Ten minutes before she died something in me clicked. I stopped caring that a visitor prior to me might have had a reason for leaving the TV on and I just up and switched it off. Then I sat back down to sit with Aurora and connect to her breath. She was not connecting very easily to it herself. Her exhales were long and once she got into one, she seemed to deeply let go into it. And then just like that! — her eyebrows would lift in shock, her mouth would grimace. She’d grab for air, get a tiny bit and hold on. It was like, at the bottom of each exhale, some last outpost in her mind would remember that it wasn’t ready and forcefully assert itself over the rest. This was mesmerizing. Nothing held any more importance for me in that moment. For all the ways I have of distracting myself that I call living, this moment of dying was truly alive—“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” It felt to me that there was so much relief in the exhales and so much pain in the inhales. The field of my mind had been mostly empty just being absorbed with witnessing this breath when a clear and simple thought happened:
“It’s okay to let go,” …and she did. “Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…”
There was a little gurgle at the back of her throat and I couldn’t believe it. Was that it? Was she going to grab again? I knew she wasn’t going to …but wasn’t she? I felt myself on the edge of my chair, leaning in toward her. More weight in my left sit bone, I adjusted to be even. Attentive with every cell of my being, I found myself holding my breath, all consciousness in the room in a bubble of light that held just Aurora and I while all else was gone, hazed out in a way. Inside me was just a heavy vast quiet and. Like water bugs on top of a calm ocean, I saw my thoughts skittering around. I should get the nurse! Should I get the nurse!? What time is it? What time did she die? How much time has passed? It’s after 5:30! I’m supposed to get the food cart! No way! No way! I’m not leaving! She’s still here! In that deep quiet part of me I could feel her. I could not leave her yet. The food cart and dinner for the others would wait. Or be taken care of by someone else. I was here. There. In this moment with no space for anything else. Deep vast quiet inside. Yellow light from the bedside lamp. Aurora’s body. Aurora and I. The furniture in the room. The room high in the sky. A river and bridge outside. And I could really feel her—still there.
