the last good bye, angel
On my way to you, on a layover in Copenhagen, I opened a book my dear friend landed me for this moment, this pilgrimage and one of the first sentences was: “If you wrestle an angel, you will grow muscle.” And I stopped reading and ordered a glass of prosecco.
Here we go… A good bye trip of angels.
.
These were the moments, the hours and days I really, truly understood the importance of being present with someone. You know, all the tantric or spiritual things we talk about so often… how to be present with one another, how giving someone our utter presence is such a gift… not to reach for the phone to scroll or to get into the head and check out when with someone… I got it there, sitting with you. No book or teachings could teach me this as much as you on your deathbed. But of course… you were always a good teacher for me.
In these moments it also didn’t matter what stories you’re made out of, what’s behind you and how much more pain is in front of you. The love I felt for you was not “because of…something you did or something you were” … it was just because of YOU… just because you existed …
All there was, was your breath, your heart beat, your soft skin. And me trying to soak it all in, so I can remember, so for me you can live as long as I do. And maybe through words even longer.
I tried to soak it all in-the beauty of you… and you kept saying how you wished I would have found you in a different state… and in that moment I understood acceptance… every time you said it, I tried my best to give you my acceptance of you. I really tried to have only acceptance and love in my eyes when I looked into yours. Nothing but love. Nothing but acceptance. I think after many of these sentences of you saying you were sorry for your state, you got it - that this was a gift. To be with you in this state. To sit with someone who’s transitioning. To sit with someone who’s about to see the light. To talk about the light with you that you’re about to see… what a blessing.
I didn’t know you as a baby but yet this is how you felt to me now. It’s like you’ve come full circle, back to the beginning… and so ready for the end. I thought of the Will to death… and those were the strangest thoughts. The ones I’m not ready to write about yet.
I shrunk your long process into couple of days for me…those are the consequences of living abroad. Although the ones who witnessed you all along might say the blessings of living abroad.
“The last good bye” - so often used… in songs, books, movies… but fuck me…! The last good bye in real life, when you know it’s really the last one… That changed something in me.
I even thought, with full honesty: If one can’t sit with death, can one sit with life?
Last week, few days before you died, I remembered a moment after waking up from a dream. I remembered when we were putting my mother to her grave and you gave me some tiny statues of angels and said I should throw them into the grave. I remember saying: fuck these angels, there are no angels! Now, 25 years later, I’d be so happy to shower your grave with angels tomorrow when they put you to rest with my mother and the Mother Earth.
Seems like I might have changed my mind about angels after all.