Breath of Life

My grandfather died today.

I was once told that the most powerful experiences are being present as someone enters this world and being present as someone leaves it.

Today I learned they are remarkably the same.

I sat with my grandfather the past two days and listened to him breathe.

Yesterday, it was a struggle, fraught with agitation that left him unable to rest. I held his hand in my hand, I tried to bring him comfort with touch, but there was no peace in his restless breathing, his restless body. I closed my own eyes for a moment and breathed deeply, the calming, "Feel the breath," mantras of so many yoga classes ringing in my ears as calm settled over me.

Breath. The essence of life. Never have I been more aware. It is breath we listen for when a baby is born. It is breath we listen for as we watch someone die. It is breath that calms us and breath our body will keep taking long after everything else seems to have slipped away.

In my own moment of peaceful breath, I remembered another particularly beautiful mantra from yoga, one whispered silently at the end of a meditation: "Inhale life. Exhale joy. Breathe in life. Breathe out joy." And so, as I sat with my grandfather, I closed my eyes again and placed my hand on his heart, a top his laboring chest. I imagined a power working through me, one that could take away his anxiety, take away his suffering, and leave him at peace, if only for a moment. I inhaled deeply of life, and exhaled joy and wished the same for him, knowing the life he inhaled was not of this world, that the joy was of the next. And while I cannot say that it calmed him, it did calm me. The life I breathed in was one of sunny days and laughter, the joy I exhaled, happy memories of the man who was my grandfather.

When I arrived at the nursing home today, his breathing had changed. Gone was the agitation. Gone the anxious fight. He was still. The breath still labored, but smoother. Except that it would stop. It would stop for long seconds. Almost a minute. His breath would stop and I would hold my own. Willing him to breathe again and wishing him the peace to not breathe again. Instinct dies hard. The body wants to breathe. We want the ones we love to breathe as much as we want their struggle to end. The breathing and not breathing went on for long hours as our family sat beside him. I thought of Alex, newly born. I could not close my eyes for weeks. I needed to watch him breathe. My eyes on his tiny chest would will his lungs to keep inhaling and exhaling. My eyes would guarantee that he would breathe. When my eyes could stay open no longer, it was my hand on his chest. I could feel it rise and fall. If my hand were there, he would breathe.

I watched my grandfather like that today. I watched his chest rise and fall and stop. And then start again. I looked around the room at my aunt and uncles, cousins, mother, grandmother. I know we were all doing the same. We could talk and laugh, sit silently or cry, but we were really listening for that breath.

And it was my grandmother, his wife of 70 years, who first knew it would not come again. She sat with his hand in her hand and said, "He isn't breathing." My eyes met my mother's eyes over his body and knew his breath would come no more. So silent, a breath. So silent that last exhale. So loud the silence that followed even as it ushered in peace.

I am too tired tonight. Each of us who loved him will greet sleep with a different emotion - peace, sadness, relief, emptiness. I think of my grandmother falling asleep without him for the first time in 70 years. I think of my mother, my aunt, my uncles - their first night without a father. I think of me, of us, his grandchildren. And I think of him. I think of him and I simply can't do it without seeing a happy man - his legs free, his mood light, a fishing pole in his hand, a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, and a smile on his face.

I inhale life and exhale joy. And I know he does the same.