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Dve, exhale

Dve, exhale

When your child is born, this is what you watch. Her breath. It lives roundly and soundly in her belly. So content she is, the world of events waiting for her to happen have not yet interfered with the peaceful, abiding fullness of her belly breathing.

All is calm. All is bright.

The rest of our lives, we spend trying to get the breath back to our bellies. Contentment a memory an attentive parent once saw in us.

When my father breathed his last breath and finally surrendered his all to this world that asked so much of him, I was not there to see it.

I wonder. Is our will active at the very end? Does our breath leave us or do we let go, willingly, into that final ultimate exhale? Who takes the lead in the dance right then?

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