Death watch

I have been visiting the hospital where my good friend and therapist lies dying. She had a stroke last Friday and has slid into a coma since. Today I am bemused by the conventional wisdom being bandied around that she cannot let go, and the not so silent urging by some of her many friends that her time is done and it is alright to let to and pass from this life.

I sat quietly in a corner this afternoon, my own need to sit with my friend over ridden by the stream of visitors all driven by the same desire. I watched for the while I was there and wondered if I had known the same person as so many of the other visitors who were so distressed at her lingering in life after a fashion.

To me it seems as if she is moving purposefully in her own time and own way toward the end of her life. This is a liminal time, not a pause governed by fear or uncertainty. I wonder if I knew a different person perhaps, one whom I cannot imagine shrinking from what is to come. Working with her, and knowing her as I did she was always purposeful, sometimes eyewateringly so. Her timing might have on occasions been quite different from mine, but again it was always purposeful. I simply can not see her abandoning the habits of a lifetime now.

Whatever the truth of the matter I shall not know as she is unlikely to regain consciousness so instead I continue to pray for light in her darkness and courage for the final journey and peace in her ending.