In The Quiet

I don't know what to call it, the absolute stillness of death, the nothingness in sound and movement, the darkness that remains when the light of life goes out? But I do feel it and I do recognize it. It's the stillness when the air stops and life stops.

The first time I experienced this stillness of death was when I sat in the hospital room with my stepmother when she died. There were two of us in the room and then her life left. Her breathing stopped, her heart stopped and the stillness in the air made me feel alone. I held her still warm hand and sat alone with her for three hours just feeling peaceful in a strange aura of quiet.

I felt it when Vike died and when Tessa died, my first two dogs but I didn't have the emotional capacity at the time to truely absorb that stillness.

Now I exist in the stillness of Kuma's death, the space between life and death where there is no sound and no existence. A place where I am completely alone.

The Chickens Next Door

Yesterday, I walked outside to say hello to the two chickens next door. They were still in their pen. Funny, but they are my connection to life sometimes. I observe them and marvel at their behaviour and feel good, They have their life purpose, instructions and behaviour all set. They have adapted to their environment and are busy all day with their set routine. At the end of their work day they come back into their pen knowing it's time and they climb their ladder and huddle together to stay warm.

When I went out the second time, just an hour later, the door to their pen was open as it was most days. But instantly I knew they were gone. I felt the stillness of the absence of life. There was no sound or movement, nothing. I looked all around for them but I already knew. How did I know? I think it was the stillness that I recognized. That absence, that nothingness when something that was there and is now gone.

I felt some sadness because they didn't know an hour ago that their life, their routine and their home was to be turned upside down. My neighbour is very caring for his animals so I know that he took them somewhere else for the winter so that is probably good for them. Their whole life they were together, just the two of them and they stayed close to each other all the time. Now, they will have to adapt to new chickens and a new home. I hope it goes well for them. And I still go outside today and look for them in case they came back.

The chickens were my daily excape from the intensity of the quiet that I live in.

Peace in the Quiet

But there is peace in the quiet. The kind of peace you feel when you hug someone you love and the world stands still for that moment and nothing else exists or matters.

It is in this quiet, this absence of everything where time and life don't exist. It is the place where I am aware of my life. I am conscious. The quiet is ground zero. It is the death and the beginning of life. It is incubating.

This is where I exist and my window of the world lives on in Facebook.