by Anitra Lahiri, RYT-500
I am not going to claim you are “going somewhere better.”
I am not going to tell you, “Everything will be OK.”
I am not here to say, “Stop worrying.”
Or worse, “Be strong.”
I will not offer you platitudes.
I will not promise you closure.
I will not say I can make it better.
No. I am here to be present with you.
To honor your experience — whether it brings fear, acceptance, anguish, peace, grief, anger, wonder, all of the above, or none of the above.
This is uniquely yours to experience.
I am here to offer you a witness.
To sit beside you as you feel and think and speak whatever arises.
I am here to assure you that whatever flows through you in this moment
is utterly and unequivocally valid.
You have no obligations here.
No expectations to fulfill.
No roles to perform.
You have the right, to simply be.
Dying.
What does that mean for you?
A door cracking open to what lies beyond?
Or a narrowing focus on what remains here?
Perhaps it’s none of these things.
Or all of them,
shifting and colliding in a way that defies understanding.
You are allowed to not know.
You are allowed to rail against it.
You are allowed to find moments of beauty even if your breath grows shallow.
You are allowed to feel everything — or nothing at all.
This is yours to shape or unshape, yours to define or leave undefined.
I can promise you this:
You will not walk this path unseen.
I will bear witness to your joy if it emerges,
to your sorrow if it wells up,
to your silence if words fall away.
I will sit with the weight of your experience, without trying to change it.
I will hold space for your light, however dim or brilliant it may feel.
You are not your pain.
You are not your fear.
You are not your illness or your wounds or your fading breath.
You are the vast, ineffable spirit that has carried you through life.
And even now, in this liminal space, you are whole.
And you are profound.
Anitra Lahiri 