Life & death. What I learned from watching someone take their last breath on this earth.

Watching her take her last breath was not what I thought it would be like. Okay, I’ll admit, I suppose I had never really “thought” about it.

I was leaning in next to her and quietly humming in her ear. I was holding her hand gently. I was confused at what was happening. Her eyes were sort of looking out at something far away but at the same time weren’t focused at all. I knew she could hear me though, so I kept singing.

Strangely enough, the song from that movie Babe came to me. The movie about the darling little pig. God, I love that movie. I hadn’t seen it in over ten years. How did I remember the lyrics?

“If I had words to make a day for you, I’d sing you a morning golden and true. I would make this day last for all time. Then fill the night deep in moonshine.”

I had heard about a supposed “death rattle” that people make when they are leaving — but there was no sound when she left. Just a sort of light and elegant gasp.

“Just one more!” I hoped.

But no. No more came. That was it. No more breath.

I had missed it somehow. I wanted a slow motion replay.

Breath had just been there. Where the heck did it go?! Inflation and then no deflation. Inhale but no exhale.

Is every last breath an inhale? Isn’t that an interesting thought? Do we breathe our last breath in or out, and what does it mean?

Hers was an inhale.

To me that meant she wanted one last batch of air full of us and our absolute love for her to take on her journey.

Her breath was graceful. She went, as they say, peacefully. Even as the cancer ravaged her healthy body, which had been anything but peaceful. Even as we all surrounded her bed and denied that death was imminent. Her last breath was beautiful — just like her.

Then something crazy happened. In that final moment when she inhaled, there was this sort of slight lull. Like in a play where you lean in from your seat and think, What happens next? We all waited for the exhale. But when it didn’t come, there was only the loudest silence you ever heard.

And then came a ripple. An energetic ripple that cracked through me, through her husband of 45 years and through her son. It was like a bomb had dropped and that ripple went across the universe and washed through every person she had ever known and through anyone she had ever loved. My mom woke up in her bed in Chicago. My friend in Berlin texted me at the exact moment. I believe they felt it.

Then came the feeling of a deep, large crack. It felt like the world’s biggest boulder had split right in two. A slice down the center of the largest and strongest rock known to man. As though lightning struck it in some sort of uneven blast.

We looked at the hospice man very briefly and he checked her pulse. He gave a slight nod to confirm our worst fears. Yes. She was gone.

There was peace. But there were tears. When the rock cracked open, I broke open. My heart burst with all the love a heart could hold; it let things in and it let things out. It would never be the same.

I watched my Uncle sob and break in a way I had never seen. I started to cry from a place that was deeper than I had ever known.

I missed her so soon. I missed her smile and her voice and her human life in the exact moment that it was gone — in a way I didn’t know was possible to miss someone or something. It was a guttural missing that couldn’t be filled by anything else.

Suddenly, I understood all there is to life. Yes. That’s right. The meaning of life.

She showed me just as much in her death as she showed me in all my years growing up. That you are either breathing. Or you are not. You either take a breath and then take one more, or you don’t. You either see the sun rise another day or you only see it set on your last day.

But mostly that there is nothing if you don’t have breath.

That same ripple that washed over me covered me in a residue that has yet to let me be stressed about anything since. I check in several times a day now with myself.

“Did you just breathe?” “Yes! I did!” “Yay! You’re alive!…How about now?” “Yup! Just took another one!” “Yay! You’re alive!” (And so it goes.)

It is simply enough. It has become enough since I saw her take her last.

One breath is all that it takes. Moment to moment.

It is all that there is.