I suspect my body was conserving energy for what came next. But at the time it didn’t feel like bracing. It felt strangely like presence, the kind I attempt but often fail to manufacture for myself. Perhaps, before death showed up, I had been striving too hard, with meditation or with yoga, racing into class, always a little late, hoping to find peace while knowing the parking meter outside had run out.
It turns out presence isn’t something you achieve. It’s what’s left when everything else falls away.
Lexi, the young ICU nurse, helped me get there.. Alone with Harry at his bedside, I interrupted her quiet, steady focus on the monitors and asked her, “How do you do this work, day in and day out?” It’s a question ICU nurses get all the time from people who aren’t in health care. But I know what it’s like to shepherd families through loss. I wanted her to know I saw her—just like she saw me. She paused and shifted her gaze from the machines to me and said, “I try not to get too attached. But sometimes it feels impossible.” Our eyes locked and I knew she understood my pain.
