I still need to write. Kamalashila died yesterday morning. I am still here. It is incomprehensible. I do not know how I feel. I do feel something. I feel many things. But I cannot give it words. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I just gaze ahead. I talk to friends and cry when I think about the past three weeks and the pain Kamalashila had to go through. I cry about the pressure I have felt making some decisions. I said goodbye to him a number of times yesterday morning, after he had died. I thanked him for our lives together. For all he has given me. I kissed his forehead when he was still warm. I stroked his hand. I kissed his forehead when it was a bit colder. I stroked his hand again. I looked at his chest. It was not moving, not heaving. No more laboured breathing now. I kissed his forehead later and it was much colder. I kissed him for the last time when it was 11 am. It was seven hours after he had died. He was quite cold. I took the Manjushri rupa. Left the scarf that was draped around it with Kamalashila. I walked out of the door and left him behind.
The last time I had seen him alive was the evening before. I had been looking in regularly to see how he was doing and sat with him for short periods. He was very close to death, the doctors had said. It could happen any moment. And you could see it in his face, hear it in his breathing. But when I walked in at 9pm and chanted a mantra for him, I saw something on his face that made me think: it is enough. He doesn’t need me here anymore. He wanted to be left alone. So I left. His sister Zoë and I were at the hospice. Both sleeping in different rooms. We asked the nurse to wake us up an hour after he had died. So he would have that hour still to himself. They checked him every 15-20 mins, by shining a torch on his chest, in the darkened room. The room felt very clean and quiet. He was clean and peaceful. The air was fresh.
At a quarter past five the nurse knocked on my door. He is gone, she said. We embraced. These nurses and doctors at the hospice are so amazing. He was later dressed in a suit and t-shirt. One nurse put a purple flower on his chest. She also opened the window. For his spirit, she said. Kamalashila 2, as he called himself after the new diagnosis, always wore suits. There is no space in the hospice for people to come and visit the body later on. But we had some hours. They stretched it till 11am because it was cold. I put a message in the group with helpers and good friends. Some friends came and sat with him. Outside his room we sat and talked. I talked a lot. The friends listened and witnessed. I felt held. Then at 11am I went in to say my final goodbye and collected the rupa. This part was now over. His body was going into the morgue. I went on the bus. Home.
*This song is playing through my head today.