[PASSING]

Passing - Writer

I wrote 'passing' after having spent three months in St.Vincent's Hospital and three weeks in intensive care.

At one stage the doctors asked me if I wanted to be revived if my body crashed again. I said "no, just let me go."

I recovered.

When I finally made it home, minus a kidney I got to thinking about death and dying and how everything else is put on hold while this second most important of journeys begins.

I remembered my family spending hour after hour in a hospital room in Hastings, New Zealand as my Aunt slowly passed away.

None of us were aware of time or space, all that mattered, all that was important was happening in that room at that second. It was the most real thing in all our lives.

I remembered all of our breathing being in sync. As she breathed in so did we, as she exhaled so did we. It was as if we were all united for that period of time as one being in a shared experience as my Aunt made her transition from this reality to another, her final journey.

I remembered the final moment when her breathing stopped. There was no weeping and no sadness. There was just the love that our family felt at that moment. The sadness came later when we returned to 'reality', but in that moment we were all a family again.

I wrote "passing" at one sitting, it seemed to talk to me and for the briefest of times I was back there with my family, in New Zealand, in that small room.

Reading copy available on request.