Body and Soul - Witnessing the Distinction First Hand

It has been a difficult few weeks.  Both my mother and grandmother passed away last week.  While I didn't necessarily intend to write about them here; I felt compelled to share the experience I had in witnessing my mother's passing on.  First, I must say, I never liked the expression "passing on" or even "passed" but instead used the expression "passed away."  However, after sharing someone's last breaths with them, I truly think "passed on" is the appropriate expression.

My brother and I were given a gift last week.  We were able to be with my mother for her final moments of life and able to hold her hands and to tell her we loved her as she drifted from a semiconscious  state of life to one without breath, brain or cardiac function.  I supposed I mean death; but the distinction between life and death was so blurred during those final moments that I sensed it was not as black and white as I had previously believed.

While waiting for the nurse to return, I kept watch over my mom, as I had for the previous three weeks during her hospitalization.  Slowly, and ever so gradually, the life began to fade from her face.  I have seen my share of deceased loved ones and even cadavers in medical school; but beholding life leave my mother, moment by moment, had a striking effect on me that I did not expect. 

As the moments progressed, the consequences of lack of circulation were evident and at first, that was what I had sensed; but as time went on I felt that there was more to what was occurring.  It seemed that something was released from her  and that she was being liberated from the body that had previously housed her.  Her essence was no longer within the physical structure that once represented who she was.  I truly felt that her soul was being released and that her body was simply that - a body - an empty shell. 

While I am incredibly sad about the losses I suffered these past two weeks, I seemed to have found strength in what I witnessed.   I did not have a need to spend more than a few very brief moments with them prior to their funerals.  At the time, I thought it was odd that I didn't seem to need to say goodbye to these women who meant so much to me; but I now realize that I must have sensed the distinction between their bodies and souls.