The smell of disinfectant hangs, heavy

As doctors drift by, angels in white coats

Stethoscopes draped on shoulders like

The wires that leave their patients arms.

The quietness presses down on us,

A little family unit, waiting for

The inevitable, the gentle rhythmic beep

To fade to nothing as she slips away,

You’d hardly notice, it’s so understated,

I don’t know what I had expected,

To see her soul leaving through her mouth?

But no, she’s gone in much the same way as she came.

I was reading about somebody who lost their dad when they were young and they could vividly remember going to the hospital before he died and seeing him lying in the bed with a tube coming out of his mouth.

It immediately made me remember being about five or six years old and visiting my great aunt in hospital a few days before she died. I still feel a little bit traumatised from that experience as she looked so unlike herself, the aunt who used to be so full of life and fun.

Hospitals are horrible places at the best of times, but that was the only time I had been in a place where people were really sick. I still don’t think I’m very good at acknowledging death and how it will even come to me one day, but I remember really getting it in that moment and it terrified me.

I’m sure that if I were to go and visit somebody who was about to die now, I would have a much easier time, but since reading my book this morning, I’ve been replaying that visit all afternoon.

Death comes to us all, but it will never fail to be both frightening and, I suppose to a certain extent, quite beautiful and liberating.

Much Love

Rachel xx