When my parents died, I felt them for a while. i know that was all illusion too: as somebody’s child you have always assumed you are the most important thing in the world to him or her, they wouldnt just leave you!
But with my sister, i do not feel her. i feel she did, gave, bore, all she could while she was alive, up to the last minute. And that’s the end. Out of business. Dark.
In fact she did say of me, at our last visit, ”We’ve had our moment.” Of course I tried to make a joke: ”That’s IT?” to which she replied ”That’s all ya get.” She was NOT joking. In my last words to her, i begged her not to forget me . But i know now she has.
Of our world, the country of our childhood, which no one else ever visited and to which no one can ever return—I am now the sole citizen. Our language is a dead language, no one can interpret me now.
i need to write this; I’m sorry dear Simon, Ettes and our readers.
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
Hypatia, why are you apologizing? We want to be here for you, in any way we can!
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Dearest Hypatia, no apology is necessary for this beautiful expression of our shared humanity! As you carry the love, wisdom, and whimsy of your family forth in the world, I, for one, am enriched by it often. Thank you!
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What Nanda said!
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Thanks for the vote of confidence, JaC; and for adding to my pixelated hug for our dear Hyp!
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Yes, hugs, Hypatia!
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Thank you both. I’m so possessed by agony. It is, as you say, everyone’s story .
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Oh, Hypatia. Hugs!
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. When you visit someone you KNOW is dying, well, nothing is grand enough, big enough, momentous enough for the occasion. Act like you don’t believe it. Act like you DO believe it. Well and then what? I love you, I love you—that’s all there is, something you’ve said a million times before. It feels—anticlimactic..Like if someone slit her wrists with a ballpoint pen she had been using just a few minutes before to fill in a crossword puzzle. In the midst of life we are in death. The light that was flickering, goes OUT.
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The light never goes out, Hypatia. There is eternal life after this one. You will see your parents and your sister again-this life is not all that there is, dearest, dearest, Hypatia.
Robin always said that he didn’t have enough faith to be an atheist, lol, but he might be fairly described as being almost an atheist? He was agnostic, and had serious doubts about whether Heaven really existed. Robin was also-is also- an absolute saint. He was morally superior to me in every possible way. He also found death totally unbearable. All of us do, but Robin more so. I remember a few months before Robin died, we were talking about my Dad, who was 94 at the time, and doing very well for a 94 year old. But, he was 94. Robin was sobbing, thinking about my father’s death, and I was like,”Robin, he’s 94, he can’t stay with us forever.” But, Robin was inconsolable. Some of the greatest saints are not believers, but they suffer so much more than the rest of us do. They suffer so much more than any human being ever should.
I never succeeded in convincing Robin that Heaven is real, but I know that he is there now. He used to tease me mercilessly when I would pray with cards that had pictures of saints on them: I now pray to a card that has Robin’s picture on it, and I know that Robin is laughing. Or, as my mother said to me once, “Robin is in Heaven, and he now understands that I was always right about everything.”
Hypatia, whatever your beliefs are, one day you will be in Heaven with your parents and your sister, and you will know that I always right about everything, or at least, that I was right about Heaven.
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Oh dear Judy! I don’t know, I don’t know….but thank you so much, you have suffered such great loss.
In the end the dying say, as King Arthur does in Tennyson’s poem,”Comfort thyself. What comfort is in me?/I have lived my life..” it is unbearable, seems cruel, to the living, but the dying know they will understand when their turn comes. We go alone, finally: we recede from the living who are weeping, holding out shreds of material comfort, of mortal love, Neither the living nor the dying can stop it, it’s like the tide going out, like the sun going down. We see it setting but oh the difference when the light sinks below the horizon.
“Parting is all we know of Heaven
And all we need of Hell.”
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“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
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The light we can *see* goes out; but, it fills our hearts and minds, warms us, and is shared as we travel through the world. Energy is never wasted. It may disperse, to begin a journey about which none of us knows -yet.
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Jesus wept over Lazarus, dear Hyp, and we know what came next. (You’re in good company.) The Ineffable shares our grief, respects our uncertainties, and surrounds us with the space we need to come through. (More HUGS)
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