His Head In My Lap

He died in the dark, in silence, with his head in my lap.

I felt it happen.

This is the only part of my life anybody has ever asked me to be exact about, and nobody asking has been able to stay for the answer.

I did not watch him die. I died.

Whatever it is, at the end, when the person stops. I had all of it. At full strength, arriving in me as mine, because there has never been any other way it arrives. I was in there with him for it and I went through it with him and it finished.

And then I was still there.

That is the sentence. That is the one nobody has ever heard properly, and I have stopped trying with people who did not lose somebody in a container.

It finished, and he was done, and I was not done.

There was no light. I could not see him. People picture a face. There was no face, there was a weight and a temperature and then a different temperature.

I held on to him.

I do not know for how long. Hours. The truck was still going. Somebody near me was still praying, which I could feel, and it was doing nothing, which I could also feel.

I was not crying. I have been asked. No.

My grandmother used to say that you hold on longer than you think and longer than you want.

She meant the living.

I was still holding him when the truck stopped.