Finding oxygen...

..at 4:51 a.m.

Dearest community,

4:51 a.m.

I am woken.

The thoughts are strong, heady, and clear.

I see myself on a stage, a spotlight upon me.
I am speaking about why I became a death doula.
I am speaking about grief and dying as the only pathways to survival.

Of our selves. And of our species.

4:51 a.m.

My daughter asleep beside me. In 1.5 hours, we’ll be whispering in the laundry room as we put rainbow-hued paper hats on our morning heads. Me, my daughter, and my son. Tiptoeing into Ted to sing him happy birthday.

This is the 19th birthday of his I celebrate beside him.
The first time I do it as his wife.

And my life. My life. So full of beauty. So full of strife.

It’s still 4:51 a.m., though, as the story goes.

I reach for my phone, which happens to be beside me for I am the one in charge of alarm duty. For it is his birthday.

I start banging notes into an email to myself.

It’s coming through thick and clear. My journey. My travels. My career pathway. A story that could be told a certain way, if I chose to tell it that way. For I am a storyteller.

For we are all storytellers – always telling our lives into existence.

I see myself standing on that stage, here beneath the warm blankets, 4:54 a.m. by now, my daughter’s ankle resting on my calf.

My body seems to be filled with some sort of dark mud. It’s like I’m breathing underground.

I may lose some of you here. That’s OK. In the quest to be more of me, I am surrendering to the conditional gods of “make sure everyone gets you / make sure everyone is comfortable / only show one side of the story for happiness sake.”

4:59 a.m.

I am breathing darkness. My body is full of density. The weight of being a human alive right now, at this time. It is pressing upon me from the inside out. I make myself continue taking electronic notes. I continue breathing dark mud and I continue taking notes, for something is trying to speak through me.

Something is wanting me to come to life again. Something is telling me that I will be living differently, soon enough. Something is telling me that it’s just a little bit more, and you know you can make it just a little bit more.

Something is showing me on that stage in that gold-trimmed, floor-length, sheer kaftan I bought in Florida last year. My feet are bare and brown – golden toed – and I am going on and on.

In our quest to heal ourselves on an individual level, we have forgotten ourselves. We have been severed from the threads that could make us whole.

In our quest to obsess over ourselves as individual, independent entities, we have created more to be healed. More that we are severed from.

“The conditioned fantasy of the segregated self,” as Francis Weller calls it.

We have lost one another. And the oxygen we create together.

That segregated self is the cause of ALL my strife.

It is the thing that powers comparison, which leads to despair.

It is the thing that tells me I am feeling too much or wanting too much or dreaming too much or hurting too much. Me me me. That segregated self that thinks it should slam itself in a package that clearly resembles all the other packages that all the other regularly functioning segregated selves are showing up in.

5:03 a.m.

That’s why I became a death doula.

Well, that’s one of the reasons I became a death doula. Another big one is because the two intimate experiences I have with death – when my brother took his life on Thanksgiving 2015 and when my father passed in September 2022 – had the most exquisite sides to them.

In their passing, they came so close. So near. They rocket-bombed that concept of the segregated self right out of the atmosphere in an instant. I could feel their particles inside my particles. Though the grief was limb-achingly raw, it was also beautiful.

Like… that point when you’re so happy, you cry.

That point when you are so in love, it hurts. It aches.

So sad you remember that you are, indeed, alive. As in, here today but not forever in any way.

Although my brother’s passing was a decision he took on his own, I was granted the huge honor of spending the last 7 days of my dad’s time on this side of the light with him. Sitting beside him as he, in many ways, made that decision.

It broke me and healed me all at once.

And at 5:00 a.m. this morning, I am standing on a bright stage remembering that darkness. The kind that I met in my brother’s passing. My father’s passing. That immense, infinite darkness that bears

so

much

light.

That transcendental hallway where I am soaked in it all, just particles of it all.

That darkness that we are conditioned to avoid.

Not me, any longer.

Perhaps this is the darkness I am breathing, 5:03 a.m., banging away on my iPhone screen as my daughter mumbles beside me. In-between in her dreams.

Can I soften into that darkness, just a little bit more?

Can I find its bright-white edges?

Can I let it take me, blood and bones, and teach me all that I’ve yet to know?

So I became a death doula. In fact, my studies are still officially underway.

And the first thing we were told by the CEO, founder, and head of the school was,

I too am a fellow student. Death is the teacher.

And what do students have for their teachers? Questions.

Since I couldn’t ask her – and knew deep inside that any answer she gave me would only be her angle of truth – I proposed my biggest question of them all to Death.

And I am proposing it still. On some days, in certain moments, more than others.

Rather than asking Death what was waiting for me on the other side…

I asked

What are we doing here alive?

What, Great Teacher, is this Life thing all about?

It answers me in the small spaces between language and story and quest.
It answers me in the sunlight on the white grass, winter here already.
It answers me in the sound of my daughter’s shoes cracking the ice in the driveway.
It answers me in a voicemail drenched in tears from my dear dear friend in Seattle.
It answers me in Ted’s arms as the tomato soup watches my tears soak his T-shirt.
It answers me in the sip of sunshine on my face on the walk to the car.
It answers me in these Tuesday entries to you. To you. To you.
It answers me in a mug of rooibos tea with honey that I serve my sick son.
It answers me in my daughter’s ankle on my calf at 4:51 a.m.

It answers me right now, at 3:39 p.m. of that same 4:51 a.m. day. As the sun begins setting and the darkness retakes her place.

It answers me in the cold. The darkness of a lightless Swedish winter, as my blood and bones cry out, “But Sarah, this is NOT where we belong! 19 years here – we just cannot go on!”

Death answers, every single time.

What are you doing here alive, dear one?

What are you doing HERE alive, dear one?

You are not here to do Life.

You are not doing Life.

“You” are Life doing Life with Life doing Life.

And Life?

It knows its lines.

And you? You’re “doing” just fine.

4:51 p.m. The darkness is now here. The day is “through,” or is it not. For there is still one husband to celebrate for all his light. For all his life.

For all our life.

Thank you for walking with me in the poetry beyond our segregated selves.
I stand right beside you, faithfully still learning my lines.

I love you,
Sarah♥️