Landed Safely

Ed stopped breathing tonight about 9:40.  There was a period of about 5 minutes with sparse breaths and then none.  Mia was sitting with him at the time.  Annika, and I came right upstairs to sit with him through those few minutes.  And then no breathing, no pulse.  Tom and Lorrine were here in a few minutes and we spent an hour in our own personal memorial service for Ed.  We are all of us so glad to have been able to be with him this past week, not to mention, for me, with him the past 35 years.

Most of us humans tend to obsess about death, in one way or another, because of its foreign-ness and because of its strangely ever-lurking presence.   As my daughter Caitlin wrote to me this morning, how can something so expected (given that Ed has had a terminal illness for 6 1/4 years) be such a surprise?  And I can add to that, how can the practical aspects of the process of dying be so opaque to us, even as some of us have read and talked and discussed it for years?  So surprise on top of surprise.
Our friend Tom, who has seen many deaths, of course, said he had never seen one as dignified as Ed's.  Ed was with the five of us entirely until he was not.  And then, after a day's further work, he was gone, leaving us weeping some, but mostly just filled with his presence and with the shared experience we had just come through.  Neither Ed, Mia, Annika, nor I had ever been with someone as they died.  Such a strange mixture of feelings.  I send them all out to you who have followed this long and final journey, even as I can't yet articulate them.

"Goodnight, sweet Prince.  And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

I can hardly believe that I cannot have Ed read through this post, as I almost always did, before I hit "publish."  But there you are.