She

She is alone.


She watched her father die.


She stood there waiting. Watching and holding vigil with all those who loved him. Why? Why did she need to see this? Why did she have to live this? No more mellow drama. No more romantic notions. No more hope. This was real life and it was unfolding before her eyes. There was so much love in the room. So much pain, and sorrow drifting from each soul that stood in fellowship with the man she called father. He laboured through death as she had laboured through birth only a few weeks before his disease brought him here. A few weeks ago she was holding a new life in her hands. Feeding it, tending it and loving every minute of it. Yet, here she stood now - in solidarity with each person, watching her father labour into a different world. She stood there watching and waiting with her family, wanting to be there when he took his last and final breath. She wanted to bridge the gap between living and the dying but she knew the truth. The others, loved him too and didn't want him to be alone, but she knew that love could not break through the barrier of being alone. Her father's death was his to bear, his alone, just has hers will be. She was in a hospital not so long ago - lying on a bed demanding her body to open and share life with the world, while everyone else watched. Those that watched her had legs and could walk away. Her legs wanted to move but could not. She wanted to be the one watching but she realised this was her life to give. While she journeyed toward new life she paused to look into the eyes of the people in the room with her and saw grief. She saw worry, but she also saw excitement, joy and love...she saw her father.

She understood his secret just as he understood hers. She and her father watched each other in desperation as the weeks leading up to this day united them and separated them forever. Life was growing steadily and pleasantly within her body, while life was draining viciously and ferociously from his. They were united in weight and in empathy and compassion. They shared vomiting and ill feelings. They sat in wonderment of the human body and were challenged by what they each had to go through, yet they remained completely alienated from one another by the fork in the road. Hers was the path of life and his was the path of death. Each path waiting for them in solitude and patience. Each path calling them to start the drama they were named to play. They had no choice. It was theirs to bear and bear alone.

So she stood at the end of the bed - a similar bed that he stood at a few weeks prior as he held his newborn granddaughter and gazed at her in awe and wonderment. In her moment she wept tears of sadness and fear. In his moment he wept tears of joy and excitement and, even possibly, hope. And while she stood there thinking about the past and future she realised that she loved him more than she had ever loved another. She marveled at his courage and strength just as he had marvelled at hers. She watched him labour into his death and beyond and the love she felt hurt in indescribable pain. Love does not span the abyss of alone. Love does not comfort on a journey like this. Love stands beyond us all - like a bubble of peace - hovering, waiting, and hoping to take your joy, pain, or sorrow and unite the emotions. But the truth is, it could pop at anytime. Love can never conquer alone.

They each relaxed into peace as both father and daughter resigned the mind to let their bodies do what nature called them to. Both were united in hope and they gave each other gifts. She gave him life and he gave her death. Hope would allow each of them to live and die. No more fear. No more unknown. No more wondering what it will feel like. The scene had begun and she and her father were the stars of the show.

She could taste the end long before her mind could fathom the possibility. She could taste the bittersweet joy of knowing him and loving him and she could hear it slip silently and slowly away. The smell of the sweet memories on warm summer nights, staring at the dark starlit sky tormented her. She could feel the overwhelming warmth of the roaring winter fire pleasantly licking the wood as her family relaxed warm and safe indoors. His large comforting hands that rocked her, and soothed her to sleep as a child taunted her knowing it would soon be gone. Her childhood - her life - moved from the dark recesses of her mind to the front of her vision illuminated by the deepest love and grief she had never known. This was real. The quiet soft spoken nurse attending to his every need, sometimes even before he voiced it was from another world. Only her father remained real. His body that remained warm and feeling in her hands as she shaved his face and rubbed his feet. It was not a dream. Her father was going to die.

And finally the body released the tortured and anguished soul and it flew away. The soul flew away, free, boundless, finally soaring high and at rest. Free of this life and born into a different one.

Her father was on his journey and she was on hers. And she was alone.

She is alone.