On Monday morning, right before I dropped off my son at school, I got a text from my sister saying my dad wasn’t well.
A few hours later I found myself on a plane to Switzerland and arrived at the nursing home just in time to say good-bye. My sister, her husband and I were gifted the experience to witness the sacred moment of my dad’s passing.
All his life, my dad believed in and studied reincarnation and in particular the moment the soul leaves the body. Here he was, living it.
My sister and I have learned so much from him just by overhearing him talk about death. (He had an entire library on this topic and I remember reading books by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross at 16!) Yet, as much as I knew about the process of dying, nothing prepares you for being in the presence of death.
That sacred moment of that last breath, when that deep quiet hits. And you find yourself crying in ways you never have.
It felt as if his soul pulled mine out to give it a squeeze and then let it bounce back into my body.
My dad was a force. A man of many interests and talents. A successful (and ruthless) entrepreneur, yet a soul that got gentler as he got older. I often described him as a ball of love in these past few years.
As he aged he became blind and eventually needed to leave his beloved house to live in a nursing home. Even though in younger years he would moan and complain about a bad cold, in this stage of his life he, with so much of his body giving out, he never complained. New nursing staff, not familiar with his name yet, would refer to him as “the kind one”.
My dad has shown me what it means to dream big, to live a courageous creative life. And in the end, he taught me the lesson that life is one big journey of finding back to your truest self, being and living love. He found it. He lived it. (Maybe not in the early years, but definitely at the end!)
What a blessing to witness his passing.
I miss you, dad.
Ps: Please call your parents, if you still can.
This photo was taken a mere 5 weeks ago, when my kids and I traveled to the Swiss Alps.