B passed away about 2 weeks ago. She had fought with cancer for 3 years.
She was a warm, witty, sweet woman. Her warm, sweet appearance - or air, often deceived me :) She was funny - in a very unexpected way. She caught me off guard many times with her witty comments.
B messaged me 2 weeks before she passed away. She was going to a meditation retreat, which I wasn't planning to attend. She said she couldn't drive by herself anymore and her friends were going to give her a ride. But she sounded light and cheerful as usual.
A week later, I ended up going to the retreat and she didn't make it.
Her close friend, who stopped by at the hospital to originally pick her up expressed her deep concern for B at the retreat - about B not being able to speak up for herself in regards to her treatment, and her missing friends and hugs. So I went to the hospital to see her.
I wouldn't be a help with verifying her medical treatment but I could cuddle her and chat - I thought.
Warm, witty B - that's whom I expected to see.
I walked into her room and "she" wasn't there.
Her body was there but "she" wasn't there. She was unconscious.
I felt like I was kicked in my gut.
Her sweet husband told me that she would respond if I try hard but I didn't feel the need to get a response out of her. I sang a song we sing at the meditation retreat, and chatted, just like I would if she was awake.
.
She came back, smiled several times responding to my story and tried to say something, which I couldn't catch. Then she would fade out again. She repeated that several times.
A nurse came in and gave her a drug, which put her to sleep - so I left.
I sent a text report to my friends who asked me to do so, went back to my car and tears and crying bursted out. It just happened, went on for a few minutes...and it was gone. I started my car.
I drove a while to a Starbucks and realized that that storm of energy was settled - enough to be able to think a short phrase we use for meditation. I was grateful to that phrase. I went back on the road to home.
***
B passed away that night or the early morning of the next day.
Next week or so, I kept feeling the pain in my heart and kept having some unsettling feeling.
It was my second time within a year to witness someone transitioning from what we call "life" to "death", from our life on the earth to moving towards the end of it.
Last time, I wasn't close to the person. I sensed her spirit in the room - sensed her strong presence, desire to stay, which could have been all just my projection.
It was completely different this time. I touched and sensed her body becoming cold. I didn't sense B's spirit. Instead of an individual spirit, I sensed the life force, which animated someone we called B.
As it released the hold of her body, it, the life force became apparent. Its completely non characteristic presence was prevailing in the hospital room, in front of the machines, around B's bed and body - everywhere. It was like all the density was defused into the air, revealing itself.
It struck me as the fact that there never was B.
It was this life force, animated her personality, moved her body, made the sensations to be felt, moved her awareness---animated the whole being and functioning. And in the presence of that life force (for not having better naming at this moment), what we do means nothing. Personality may feel comforted by a song or a word or meditation or healing....but not the life force.
And it is the same force, which is animating what I consider to be me.
There never has been me. The same life force is currently animating this being and functioning.
That non-present presence of the life force---impossibility of describing, catching, scaling, defining, categorizing, (anything!)---jolted me and left me in awe.
