Rhythms, ripples, and waves

Today I was with my father as he passed.
It’s the rhythm that struck me.

Balance abounds.
For every yin, there is a yang.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

My son turned two in May.
Birth, a cycle of increasing rhythms.
The first contractions were wide spread.
Contractions that increased in frequency.
Contractions that increased in intensity.

A rhythm, a wave, that tightened and heightened.
My wife’s body opening.
The intensity increasing.
Starting with soft, subtle sounds,
Shifting into exhausting cries.
When the birth was near,
There were growls of unmatched depth and intensity.

My son’s head crowning in conjunction with the cries.
The birthing rhythm pushing and pulsing.
The energy heightening
Coming to a crescendo.
Culminating into one final energetic pulse, a peak.

There was a brief moment of silence,
Then this gasp, his first breath.
Accompanied by my son fiercely announcing his arrival.
His call to the world.
A deafening declaration.
I’m here!

Birth, the culmination of a wave that reaches its peak.
And folds into itself.
Erupting into a chorus of cathartic cries.

Death, is the yin for that yang.

Life has rhythms.
Rhythms we often don’t spend time focusing on.
The rhythm of breath,
Our life blood,
And the energetic pulses emanating throughout our nervous system.
A symphony of waves working in unison.
Waves we ride upon and in.

When the end is in sight, the waves reveal themselves.
The rhythms seemingly out of synch.

Startled, I recognize them.
They are not the rhythms I recall.
It’s unsettling,
And hard to watch.
Yet, it draws me in like little else.
I can see the wave stretching,
Disappearing…
My primal self knows what this is.

It’s the breath…
This is what I focus on.
His chest decreasing in elevation.
His breath becoming weaker.
Subtler.
Stretching.

My father’s people, we are all gathered around.
Touching him,
Holding him,
Ushering him,
Absorbing him.
Taking him into our being.
We see each other.

I recognize the singularity of it all.
My left hand on his chest holding his heart.
My right hand holding his arm.
Completing an energetic circle.
I watch his lips,
And the subtle movement of his mouth.
Our family unified
In ways that are beyond words.
Moving with this subtle wave,
A wave that’s hardly a ripple.
It was so subtle.
The end feigning.
Life, fighting.
The gaps, the troughs, so subtle.
That’s where the silence was.
The deafening quiet
As we all waited, gripped and transfixed.
Searching for that subtle sign.
When his breath would reemerge, it was strangely startling.
As though the breath were an interruption.
These breaths, they were breaths like no other.
This wave stretched so thin,
So thin…

Then…
There was the silence.
The deafening silence.
As his essence pixilated into eternity.
I saw his body empty.
The silence was that of a wave that was no more.

These waves, they’re connected.
They begin and they end.
The wave we ride into life,
That of a warrior!
And the wave we ride out of life,
So subtle that that it’s barely a whisper.
A whisper that falls into silence.

Sweet silence and absolute surrender…