Breath in. Breath out.
Basic autonomic response. Once response is not responsive one has quite a dilemma. I don’t know if Chauncey’s last action was an inhale or an exhale; but what I do know is that, witnessing the fine line between life and death wasn’t nothin nice. Nothin nice at all. I will forever remember the moment where I saw My Brother pass into another level of existence. Snapshots of memory flashing in my mind and it is so humbling. I have never seen a person die. Never. But I did August 29, 2007. Something I do not want to witness again in my lifetime. Maybe experiencing the death which will befall me will be the same, or maybe not. I just hope it overtakes me expeditiously. A simple request which I know not an answer.
Breath in. Breath out.
I caressed his forehead several times throughout the process. Skin turning from warm; then to tepid; then to cold. I kissed his forehead throughout the three stages of a physical entity which was my Brother going through the transition from life to death. Humbling.
Breath in. Breath out.
When I was alone with him I kept repeating aloud, “You’re going to get better or you’re going to get worse. Ain’t no in between Chauncey. But whatever the case, you will be fine.” I saw his eyes trying to open time and time again and I would say the simple phrase, “You’re gonna be fine. You’re all right. Chloe says, "Hi.” And I would caress his forehead making him understand that he was not lost yet by a human’s touch, a brother’s touch. Trying to orient him in his disoriented state, and that is a sad state of affairs when one does what one expects in their time of reaching the point whence he was last night. Can’t be in two places at one time. One wants to be or have been.
I forced his eyes open gently, when he was cold, trying like hell to find a certain perspective in his visual acuity which would help him see me, so he could see he was not alone; his eyes staring out into a wondrous world which he had already passed. Pupils fixed and dilated, concentrating on a path which life had given up and death now held him in its bosom of various pathways. And all I could ask myself was, “Why?” I will never have the answer which would comfort me, when I have to witness the same place as he last night.
Breath in. Breath out.
But for now, my autonomic system is still on auto-pilot. Still living. Alas, I will have to walk his same path one of these days. And it humbles me so. I am pitiful, full of pity. Because I too must make a choice one destined moment in my life which was not one of choice but of fact, “Getting better or getting worse.” And what be me?
Breath in. Breath out.
For now, I breath. And while I still have this breath which keeps me living, I know one thing for sure. I never want to see another human being dying with these living eyes. My Brother dying right in front of me will haunt me until I must experience thine same fate as he. And that…ain’t no Beautiful thang! Now that my soul being a witness to death.
Chauncey DeWitt Hopson born May 16, 1949 and died August 29, 2007 was a thinking human being, an intelligent human, arguably a genius perhaps. A contemporary Aristotle or Plato. He gave me the gift of leaving behind the human conditioning of looking at this life superficially because that is not where the fun or where this life really begins. No, the real answers lie beneath the surface, and sometimes one must, not shall, dig deep to find those elusive answers; though, one may never find. It’s the digging, the work that makes being alive…well…worth living.
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