“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp, because dawn has come.” – Rabindranath Tagore

I had never been through the day to day of death before. People that I have known have died, certainly.  I have brought dinners to the families, been to the funerals, and sent condolence cards. But, I had never really attended death before.  I had never sat with it continuously, sat it out, until we all gathered to be with our father at the end.  Our father, the father of the beatniks, a man who was larger than life and whose personality had always transfixed everyone in his presence; a man who had never been quieted by anyone or anything, was quiet as he turned inward, floating for days somewhere between this life and the next.

It was a powerful and a humbling experience. There were moments which transcended time and space. Moments we could not explain other than with the idea that we were in the realm of miracles. It seemed as though time lost meaning as we gathered, waiting, and talking, reliving, reconnecting, and coaching each other and ourselves through the unknown process into some new reality that seemed vaguely illusive.

 It seemed to me that death was really the ultimate surrender. The days were long and warm, the most perfectly beautiful golden light and long shadows our location could bring. We sat on the lawn, day after day, life suspended, smelling the warm rose geraniums in the boxes outside the window where our father lay. My brother commenting that he imagined Dad was hearing our voices in his sleep, the murmured talk, the laughing, the clink of glasses…much like a child is aware of the adults talking as he drifts off to sleep, safe and loved in the room right beside everyone.

Dad was safe, cared for, and loved right in the room next us, as we sat in the setting sun outside his window. There, in those days, we adjusted to being the comforting presence ourselves, as opposed to the ones who had been comforted by the man himself. Then one night, as we slept, the fog slipped in, whispering long tendrils of cool vapor through the yard, deep and thick from the ocean. At the same time, Dad’s spirit slipped out of his body, and freed, swirled away from this life and off to some new unseen realm beyond our understanding.

It was not as I might have imagined it. Much like natural birth was not as I had imagined it. It was raw and earthy, absolutely humbling, intensely intimate, life affirming, clarifying, and it was surprisingly not as sad as I might have imagined. And much like natural childbirth, natural death, also leaves you mentally exhausted, completely awed by the processes of nature, and profoundly grateful.

We will miss our father tremendously. He has shaped each one of us in ways we are still discovering. But our father left us with the greatest gift a man could give; he left us each other.

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