Here are two images from yesterday.
Top photo: We were on our regular daily walk along Kahala Beach yesterday morning when I got the call with news that my sister had passed away at about 6:35 a.m.
Last night, I looked at the morning’s photos. According to the automatic date/time data recorded by the camera, this photo was taken right at 6:35.
I arrived at Bonnie’s apartment just behind the hospice nurse, who had to certify her death. Then I waited for the crew from the mortuary to arrive to remove her body. Bonnie and I were alone in the apartment longer than usual, as there was apparently some “miscommunication” with the dispatcher.
I looked in on her several times. She was resting on a bed below her collection of hats, some dating back to our Hawaiian grandmother. It felt like a good spot for her to have taken her last breath.
I busied myself calling and texting those who needed to be notified, and making a list of bureaucratic things that would need to be done soon. Then I just sat in silence for a while. Silence is good. Somehow it didn’t seem “spooky” to be there alone with Bonnie.
The mortuary team arrived. They removed Bonnie’s wedding ring and brought it to me.
And when they carried her out of the bedroom, I was struck by how small the well-wrapped package was. We are all, I suppose, somewhat “larger than life.” And when her “life” was gone, what remained was far smaller than what my senses expected.
I will try to remember the former rather than the latter.
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Hello Ian and Meda,
my sincerest condolences to you, my prayers are with you all.
My condolences to you, Ian and Meda. You write so beautifully, especially about your parents, cats and now your sister. Lovely photo of Bonnie’s hats.
My grandmother raised me. On the night of the day she died, various difficult family circumstances meant that I would be sleeping in her bed.
I thought it might be harrowing.
Instead, it was the only comfort I had for the longest while. Though I’m not very “woo-woo,” to use a friend’s description, I deeply felt her comforting presence all through that mostly sleepless night.
The next morning, I didn’t feel her “there” any more. Her spirit had departed, it seemed.
This, I believe, was her parting gift to me, the same way your 6:35 photo is probably Bonnie’s parting gift to her brother, whom she loved.
Aloha Ian and Meda,
Deepest condolences on your loss. I was just talking to my older sister about thoughts on passing and just getting older. It’s tough to verbalize those deep emotions and discuss what wishes one has. You have to be brave to get old.
Aloha pumehana, Brynn
I want to suggest listening to a piece of music that I think accords well with the mood of the two photographs and Ian’s account of sitting with Miss Bonnie for the last time in her apartment: an arrangement of the sonatina of Bach’s Cantata BWV 106. A recent article in The New Yorker has the music.
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/alex-ross/bach-and-belief
As it happens, that cantata was composed for a funeral.