Curled up tight pressed close we laid, every second counting.
During
the last few moments of any death there seems to come a feeling which I have
seen before: the approach of the thing itself. Suddenly it fills the room, and
it's so huge and enveloping that there is simply no room for anything else but
acceptance. Both you and the one leaving become quiet and calm: time is
suspended.
I wanted to stay there. I wanted the world to stop.
But it
didn't.
And now I have crossed the bar, and I am somewhere else, a
traveller in a strange country, a kind of parallel world where everything is
familiar and yet altered. I move slowly in it like a blind person, feeling my
way oh so carefully, trying to avoid sharp painful corners but sometimes I walk
smack into them and stand there stunned, temporarily mindless. My eyes, my nose
and lips are red, the colour of caution. These loved ones circle around me,
taking heed of the warning, cautiously gentle and concerned, hesitant to
approach. For which I am grateful. We talked late into the night of other
things, instinctively staying together. Now we have resumed our separate
occupations. We are floating around in separate bubbles, sometimes linked and
still, sometimes drifting away. We are changed: but I do not yet know how
we are changed.