Ode to Poppy!

I had an experience that many may not get in their life time. I had the opportunity to urge someone I loved to go onto the next part of their journey. You know the one, the last part of our destination, the journey to leave all behind, including our bodies, and go. Up until that day, I had been privileged to usher 4 people into this world and greet them as they arrived newly fresh and ready to begin a life. I got to smell their newness and share the very first of their sounds to ever vibrate through the air. I was able to hear the first breathes of life and comfort their awkwardness and new feelings of their skin touching foreign matters and the crinkling of their noses at the new smells that engulfed them. Yet it wasn't until Poppy that I got to help someone I love to leave me. I walked into the doorway of the white institutional room where he lay and heard his breathing that was harsh and strenuous, commonly known as a death rattle. His life energy seemed out of place, uncertain, as if he wasn't sure where he should be. We had been told to rush as he was in a coma and may not even survive in time for us to bid him an appropriate farewell. Yet as we walked in and saw him laying there and after a time his eyes opened and in a mumbled, barely audible voice said, "I love you." Farewell words. Simple. Powerful. Meaningful. I took his hands and told him to leave us and go to those who are undoubtedly waiting and that we would be okay. I thanked him for hanging on for us  and that I loved him too. His eyes closed and his body was quiet. I kissed him on the forehead and told him, "Okay, old man, you have held on but now it is time to leave." We gathered around him for a kiss unknowing that it would be our last and went to lunch. And, as any good leading man in a movie would do, the old man slipped away right after we left. We walked in from a very quiet lunch to have the nurse meet us and tell us the news that yes-he was gone. The cry was a different cry then the one of a newborn. It was a cry of grief and lost instead of joy and gain. My 5 year old walked into the hospital room and said, "Oh, poor poppy." then quietly went to the end of the bed and kissed his exposed big toe with only tenderness and clarity of a small child. So the cries were different but equally important. Greeting new spirits hello and bidding goodbye to those who are leaving. This is what our lives are, losing and gaining, greeting hello and bidding adieu, feeling the depths of loss and the highs of gain. The circle of life as they say………..I am extremely grateful for the circle my life has taken me and to all those I have had to say goodbye too or the privilege of saying hello!
Go and do.