When I got to the ICU, the doctor offered reassurances: “It’s still very early,” and “We’re doing everything we can”—the kinds of things doctors say to families in shock. I know this because I’ve said these things to patients myself. But I took one look at my baby brother—intubated, sedated, badly banged up—and I knew this was it.
For the three days Harry was on life support, my family took turns at his bedside as our phones exploded with messages. My world contracted to the size of his hospital room. I could hear my mother’s voice, then my father’s. I could hear the rhythm of the ventilator. But nothing else. At some point I walked down to the hospital cafeteria for coffee and wondered why it was so quiet. When I looked around, the room was bustling with people. But all I could hear was my own breath. It was as if my mind had carved out a tiny oasis of attention where only the things I needed to hear were allowed in.
It turns out presence isn’t something you achieve. It’s what’s left when everything else falls away.
On July 16, two and a half days after his accident, Harry died in the ICU. He was 45. He was surrounded by family, twelve sets of hands holding his lifeless body, sending him onward with heartache and love and stunned disbelief. Lexi stepped out. The machines were turned off. People gathered their things. When it was time to leave, I handled the logistics. The paperwork seemed extensive for someone who wasn’t coming back. But that was the easy part. Watching my parents walk out of the hospital together, heads bowed, carrying Harry’s things, was the worst thing I will ever see.
It didn’t. Nothing does. Losing Harry is forever, but the fear that I can’t survive this loss is not. Impermanence turns out to be the cruelest fact and the most merciful one at once.
So what do we have left to grab onto, if nothing truly holds? The day before the accident, Harry and I talked about mundane things: the heat wave, what my kids were up to. There was no way to know it was the last time I’d see him that way. I learned that the only honest response to impermanence is paying attention to whoever is in front of you, to the ordinary moments.
I still fail at this daily. I mindlessly scroll through Instagram. I feverishly plan my schedule weeks in advance. But something in me got recalibrated the week Harry left us. Grief showed me what quiet presence feels like. It reminded me that nothing is forever. Even love itself shifts its shape; it deepens after loss. Sometimes I lose my breath looking into the sky, wondering where Harry is and what he is doing. But my breath comes back when the clouds shift and I remember he’s been there with me all along.
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